The Butterfly Smuggler

Summary

Criminal Podcast Episode Summary: "The Butterfly Smuggler"

Criminal is a captivating podcast by Vox Media that delves into the intricate world of crime, exploring the stories of individuals who have committed acts of wrongdoing, been wronged, or found themselves entangled in morally gray areas. In the episode titled "The Butterfly Smuggler," released on February 21, 2025, host Phoebe Judge uncovers the nuanced tale of Yoshi Kojima, an infamous butterfly smuggler, and the undercover efforts of Ed Newcomer from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to bring him to justice.

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Introduction to the Case

The episode opens with Ed Newcomer reflecting on his initial expectations of his role in the Fish and Wildlife Service:

Ed Newcomer [01:05]: "I came into the service thinking, oh, I'm going to be protecting tiger cubs and you know, we're going to be rescuing elephants and things like that."

Contrasting these noble intentions is his first major case involving Yoshi Kojima, whom Kojima self-identifies as the "world's most wanted butterfly smuggler."

Yoshi Kojima: The Master Smuggler

Ed Newcomer introduces Yoshi Kojima, detailing his extensive background in illegally collecting and selling butterflies:

Ed Newcomer [01:21]: "The very first case that was kind of given to me myself to run was Yoshi Kojima, who was what, what he called himself, the world's most wanted butterfly smuggler. I mean, this guy, he knew fish and wildlife were after him and he loved it."

Background on Smuggling Operations:

Kojima specialized in rare and endangered butterfly species, particularly the "bird wings" (Ornithoptera), which can fetch up to $10,000 each. His operations spanned the western United States, where he illicitly collected butterflies from national parks like Death Valley and the Grand Canyon.

Ed Newcomer [02:49]: "Phoebe, there is a market for everything in the wildlife world. You name it, somebody will buy it and be interested in it."

Smuggling Techniques:

Kojima employed ingenious methods to bypass customs and wildlife inspectors. By shipping butterflies with their wings folded—a state that conceals their distinctive patterns—he masked their identity among legitimate insect shipments.

Phoebe Judge [03:44]: "How would he smuggle the butterflies through customs?"

Ed Newcomer [03:49]: "He'd ship them with the wings up... rolling the dice that if somebody does even look at this shipment, they're not going to know what they're looking at and they're just going to let it go."

These tactics proved remarkably effective, allowing Kojima to evade detection for years despite numerous attempts to curtail his activities.

The Undercover Operation Begins

In 2003, Ed Newcomer received a tip about Kojima's activities. Recognizing the significance of the case, he embarked on an undercover mission to infiltrate Kojima's network.

Initial Contact:

At a Los Angeles bug fair, Ed orchestrated his first encounter with Kojima under the guise of "Ted Nelson," a fellow insect enthusiast. This meeting was meticulously planned, with Ed’s boss and another agent discreetly observing the interaction.

Ed Newcomer [08:25]: "Was you to get Kojima to look like Yoshi Kojima. Ed spotted Yoshikojima at a table in the exhibition hall."

Building Trust:

Ed adopted a friendly persona, engaging Kojima in conversations about insect collecting and even accepting a gift of butterflies from him.

Yoshi Kojima [10:13]: "He had written his email address on the top of the box."

This gesture marked the beginning of a complex relationship, blending professional investigation with personal interactions.

Developing the Undercover Relationship

Over time, Ed and Kojima communicated regularly through emails and Skype calls, deepening their undercover rapport. However, the relationship began to strain due to misunderstandings and Kojima's perceptions of competition.

Challenges in Communication:

Ed faced logistical hurdles with outdated communication technology, leading to missed connections and frustration from Kojima.

Ed Newcomer [19:06]: "It was hard because this early 2000s, we actually did not have an undercover cell phone to use."

Deteriorating Trust:

Ed’s initiative to set up his own eBay auctions, using Kojima's photos, was perceived by Kojima as a breach of trust, leading to heated exchanges and ultimately, the collapse of their covert partnership.

Ed Newcomer [20:29]: "I thought we were working together, that kind of thing. Nope. He reacted as if I was intentionally competing with him."

The Turning Point: Betrayal and Arrest

Just as the investigation seemed to be nearing a breakthrough, a pivotal moment occurred when other agents accused Ed of being an informant, leading to Kojima severing ties and resuming his smuggling activities independently.

Crucial Evidence:

A game warden alerted Ed to a recorded call where Kojima identified Ed as "Ted Nelson," effectively betraying him to the authorities.

Ed Newcomer [21:08]: "It's like watching a train wreck. I was watching this undercover relationship I had built slowly degrade."

Final Confrontation:

Determined to finalize the case, Ed arranged to meet Kojima at a subsequent bug fair. This time, Ed was prepared, and Kojima's apprehension was evident during their interaction.

Ed Newcomer [26:14]: "And what did it happen?"

During their meeting, Kojima disclosed tactics to evade law enforcement, inadvertently providing the evidence needed to indict him.

Legal Proceedings and Aftermath

Kojima was indicted on 17 counts of illegally selling and smuggling endangered wildlife, facing severe penalties under the Endangered Species Act. His arrest was swift once his plane arrived in Los Angeles, and he was subsequently deported to Japan after serving his sentence.

Ed Newcomer [30:34]: "The next time Kojima said something suggestive to him on a Skype call, Ed replied, not until you come to LA and laughed."

Long-Term Impact:

Kojima's conviction served as a deterrent and highlighted the complexities of undercover operations. Nine years later, a new smuggler, Alexander Bick, emerged, referencing Kojima as his mentor, indicating the lingering influence of Kojima's operations in the smuggling community.

Ed Newcomer [33:01]: "And he says, he was my, you know, he's my mentor."

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Conclusion

"The Butterfly Smuggler" illustrates the intricate dance of undercover work, the thin line between trust and deception, and the relentless pursuit of justice by dedicated individuals like Ed Newcomer. Through detailed storytelling and poignant reflections, Criminal sheds light on the lesser-known facets of wildlife crime, emphasizing the profound impact such cases have on both the law enforcement officers involved and the broader ecosystem.

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Notable Quotes:

• Ed Newcomer [01:05]: "I came into the service thinking, oh, I'm going to be protecting tiger cubs and you know, we're going to be rescuing elephants and things like that."

• Yoshi Kojima [10:13]: "He had written his email address on the top of the box."

• Ed Newcomer [21:08]: "It's like watching a train wreck. I was watching this undercover relationship I had built slowly degrade."

• Ed Newcomer [26:14]: "And what did it happen?"

These quotes encapsulate the essence of the episode, highlighting the initial motivations, pivotal moments, and the unraveling of the undercover operation.

Transcript

[Phoebe Judge]

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[Unknown]

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[Ed Newcomer]

I came into the service thinking, oh, I'm going to be protecting tiger cubs and you know, we're going to be rescuing elephants and things like that.

[Yoshi Kojima]

Ed Newcomer worked for the U.S. fish and Wildlife Service for 20 years. He started as a special agent.

[Ed Newcomer]

The very first case that was kind of given to me myself to run was Yoshi Kojima, who was what, what he called himself, the world's most wanted butterfly smuggler. I mean, this guy, he knew fish and wildlife were after him and he loved it.

[Yoshi Kojima]

Yoshi Kojima was so good at finding and capturing one specific butterfly in the Sierra Nevada mountains that people said no one else could even find any for two years. Ed Newcomer first heard about Yoshi Kojima in 2003. Someone had called in a tip.

[Ed Newcomer]

We looked it up in our system and learned that he'd been under investigation for quite some time. In the 90s, Kojima was running around the western US illegally collecting insects from national parks including Death Valley and the Grand Canyon National Park. And Kojima's he's a Japanese citizen, but he maintained a house in Los Angeles and a home in Kyoto, Japan. And what he would do is he would collect butterflies, mostly some insects or some beetles as well, but mostly butterflies from the US Take them back to Japan and sell them. And of course, by the time you're selling them, they're all dead and they're pinned like you might see in a museum. And some of these things, depending on where you're selling them, can sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars apiece.

[Phoebe Judge]

I didn't know that there is such a market for butterflies.

[Ed Newcomer]

Phoebe, there is a market for everything in the wildlife world. You name it, somebody will buy it and be interested in it.

[Yoshi Kojima]

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal. So tell me a little bit more.

[Phoebe Judge]

About how he would do it.

[Ed Newcomer]

So he would change things up pretty regularly. So he was getting butterfly species from other parts of the world, including endangered butterflies, like highly endangered, that museums cannot even get for their scientific collections. And he would then sell those around the world using the Internet. He was an early adopter of ebay and different Internet sales sites, and he was making good money.

[Phoebe Judge]

How would he smuggle the butterflies through customs?

[Ed Newcomer]

I'm trying to think about this. I don't want to go into too much detail because I don't want to give, you know, a 101 lesson on smuggling for anybody who's thinking about smuggling butterflies. But basically what he would do is he'd hide them kind of in plain sight. When, when a butterfly is shipped between collectors or buyer and a seller, its wings are not open. And there's a process that you can actually, you can moisten a butterfly, a dry one that's pinned and then fold its wings up, you know, as if it's. Its wings are together, and then you put it, you dry it again and you put it in an envelope and ship it. Well, when these butterflies have their wings in the up position, a lot of the colors and patterns that help us identify butterflies are not visible. In order to look at them, you'd have to break the wing or remoisten it and spread the wing out. So what he would do is he'd, you know, ship them with the wings up. He'd put them in a little triangular envelope, and then he would put them in with other butterflies or moths that are common, not illegal, would not set off any alarm bells with a customs officer or a fish and wildlife inspector. And he would ship them that way, you know, basically rolling the dice that if somebody does even look at this shipment, they're not going to know what they're looking at and they're just going to let it go. And that that's pretty good bet.

[Yoshi Kojima]

In 1998, a Canadian butterfly researcher was caught trying to smuggle butterflies inside a hollowed out book. And in 2023, a man was charged with smuggling butterflies to the US by labeling them as origami, papercraft and wall decorations. But when Yoshi Kojima started mailing his rare butterflies, they got through without a problem.

[Phoebe Judge]

How much was he selling these butterflies for?

[Ed Newcomer]

Well, it varied. Yoshi sold to high end Collectors. So, you know, at the high end, his. If he was selling you an endangered butterfly, go 10,000 plus dollars for a pair of male, female pair, maybe even 10 grand for a single butterfly was not uncommon. I mean, a standard price for him would have been somewhere between 700 and $800 per butterfly. So, you know, if you're taught you can easily, easily transport or ship hundreds of these folded, enveloped butterflies at a time, you know, a single shipment could be more than 100 grand.

[Phoebe Judge]

I mean, what type of butterfly is worth $10,000?

[Ed Newcomer]

There's a group of butterflies known as the bird wings. The scientific name is Ornithoptera. And they're big.

[Yoshi Kojima]

They can be as big as dinner plates. There's one called the Ornithoptera alexandrae, also known as Queen Alexandra's birdwing. It's one of the largest butterflies in the world. They can measure around 11 inches across.

[Ed Newcomer]

That's the one he would charge 10 grand for. It's a hard one to get.

[Yoshi Kojima]

Once a man in the early 1900s saw one, it was too high to reach, so he took out his gun and shot it. He took it to a museum. The man who tipped off Fish and Wildlife about Yoshi Kojima said that he was going to be at the Los Angeles bug fair. He was going to be selling insects, and he agreed to try to talk to Kojima and wear a wire.

[Ed Newcomer]

He was another bug specialist who legally collected and sold insects all over the world. So he had his own company. And he was, you know, annoyed that Kojima was undercutting his prices. So we made a plan. We met the informant at a hotel a few days before the bug fair. Taught him how to use our undercover recording equipment, gave him all the equipment he would need. We showed him how to, you know, attach it to his body, turn it on, turn it off, what to say when he turned it on. And then the plan was I was going to meet him at the fair and I was going to be basically keeping an eye on him. And then, you know, my only job really that day was to manage the informant and, you know, see if I could eyeball Yoshi Kojima and just verify that that's who that it was in fact Yoshi Kojima. And we knew what he looked like because we. He had a California driver's license. So we were able to get his photograph and all of his details pretty easily.

[Yoshi Kojima]

Ed spotted Yoshikojima at a table in the exhibition hall.

[Ed Newcomer]

He had thinning gray hair, and he always wore baggy, like cargo shorts, usually a Hawaiian shirt. And he always had a fanny pack around his waist, positioned in the front. He was doing a brisk business. And the informants actually had a table, too. And his. His wasn't too far away, maybe 40 or 50ft away. And, yeah, I just waited and watched. I saw the informant go talk to Kojima a few times, but every time I would check in with the informant, he would say, yeah, he won't talk to me. He won't say anything. And the informant just got more and more jittery, and it wasn't going well. Definitely was not going well. So I just decided, you know, what the hell? I'm going to go talk to this guy. I just approached and was like, hey, I don't know anything about butterflies. And I started to point at different things that he was selling. And, you know, what's that? How much is that? How do you collect? You know, I just started asking a lot of really novice questions, and really, my goal was just to get him to talk. I knew that nothing he was selling right there in front of the public was gonna be illegal. But Kojima did reach under the table. He pulled out this live beetle, and it was a Dynastes beetle, which are from South America. And they're huge. I mean, they're literally, like, 6 inches long.

[Yoshi Kojima]

The male beetles have long horns that they use to fight each other. People often keep them as pets. You're not allowed to import live ones into the United States without a permit.

[Ed Newcomer]

That's a pretty minor violation. But he did, right there in front of me, show me something that had to be a violation of U.S. department of Agriculture rules.

[Yoshi Kojima]

Ed Newcomer told Yoshi Kojima that his name was Ted Nelson.

[Ed Newcomer]

There were probably two or three times when I, you know, sauntered over to Kojima's table and chatted with him and joked. And at the end of the day, I was standing in a group of people overhearing their conversation, and I felt somebody tap me on the shoulder. And I turned around, and there's Yoshi standing right in front of me. And it actually scared the crap out of me because I was not prepared for an impromptu meeting with Kojima that I hadn't arranged. You know, and he's got this little cardboard box in his hand, and he hands it to me. And as he's handing it to me, he opens it, and there's maybe, I don't know, a dozen kind of crappy butterflies pinned in that box. And he says, here, for your collection. And I'm like, well, you know, how much do you want for he's like, no, it's a gift. I'm going to help you start your collection. And you know, I couldn't believe it. But what I really couldn't believe was that he had written his email address on the top of the box.

[Phoebe Judge]

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[Yoshi Kojima]

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[Phoebe Judge]

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[Yoshi Kojima]

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[Yoshi Kojima]

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[Yoshi Kojima]

When Fish and Wildlife agent Ed Newcomer got Yoshi Kojima's email address, he realized he was going to have to Keep pretending to be Ted Nelson. He waited a week before contacting Kojima. He wrote to say thank you for the butterflies and wrote that he had tried to identify them.

[Ed Newcomer]

He immediately wrote back and, you know, said, oh, thank. You know, it's so great to meet you, but by the way, you got half of these wrong. So let me tell you what they are. So we kind of ended up with some, you know, friendly dialogue, a few emails back and forth. But then unexpectedly, he very quickly said, hey, let's meet for coffee at a Starbucks in Los Angeles, right off of Venice Boulevard. And Robertson, which is, you know, busy, busy part of town. Guy reaches out to you and says, hey, I want to meet for coffee. Things are going well. Right. You're not trying to push the relationship. He's pushing it. So we definitely going to meet for coffee. But, you know, things were unfolding quickly, which made me nervous. But we made the plan and got all wired up.

[Yoshi Kojima]

Ed's boss, Marie Paladini, was also at the coffee shop watching. Another Fish and Wildlife agent was watching from the parking lot.

[Phoebe Judge]

Were you nervous? I mean, this is the first real undercover meeting.

[Ed Newcomer]

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, yeah, nervous. Not so much for personal safety, because, you know, cover agents there and Kojima was not known to be. He had no violent history. But nervous for sure, because you don't screw it up, right? Every time. I don't care. When I did undercover work during my career and later in my career, I did a lot. I was always nervous. You're always nervous. You're nervous that you're. You don't want to blow your cover. You don't want to scare them off. You don't want to ask a question that pisses them off. You got to just do this very delicate dance where you're hanging out with somebody you actually would not hang out with normally, and you don't approve of what they're doing, but you have to pretend to be their friend and open to whatever they suggest and not offended. So it's just this very delicate dance. You should be nervous about going in on these sort of things. And, yeah, of course, I was sweating like crazy. Yeah. Also, you. You wonder, oh, my gosh, did I remember to turn on my recording device, or did I accidentally turn it on and then off, or did I bump it?

[Yoshi Kojima]

So what did you two talk about.

[Phoebe Judge]

During that first meeting?

[Ed Newcomer]

Just about everything. Talked about, you know, the bug fare, where I lived, what I did. He was pretty nosy, so, you know, he asked me a lot of questions about my background and where I lived. What I did for a living, why I was interested in insects. And luckily we did have a very good backstory built for me. And in terms of. I knew it. Well, what was it? My backstory was basically, I lived in Torrance, which is where our field office was. I told him that my dad had owned a marine supply company and had recently, you know, he had given it to me and then I had sold it. So I didn't have to explain, you know, I didn't have to go to an office. I had had a business, I sold and I had like money that I was kind of looking for something to do with the money. And that made him happy. And he wasn't interested in marine supplies. So it didn't matter if he asked me something, I'd start talking about bilge pumps and he would lose interest very quickly. So that was kind of it. But, you know, we had, we had the driver's license. I had the Costco card in my wallet. If he wanted, if he ever looked in my wallet, he would see Ted Nelson. We had an explanation for why I used a PO Box instead of getting mail at my house. I mean, everything was, there was, there was an explanation for everything that made sense.

[Yoshi Kojima]

If he asked Yoshi Kojima offered to teach Ed how to mount butterflies and to give him the equipment for it. He asked Ed if he'd be interested in selling butterflies. Ed said yes.

[Phoebe Judge]

Did you get the sense that he completely trusted you?

[Ed Newcomer]

No, I did not get the sense that he trusted me at all. And the real proof of that came after our meeting at Starbucks. He walked me out to my car. He started to walk around my vehicle. He did a full 360 degree tour of the outside of my vehicle. And he looked in the grill and he peered in the windows. He looked at the license plate and, you know, it would have been very unnatural for me not to have been like, what the hell are you doing? Right? If I had just stood there and let him walk around my car peering all over would have been weird. So I said, I said, yoshi, what are you doing? And he goes, oh, I'm looking to see if you have red and blue lights in your grill. And I wanted to check to see if you have your police shotgun in the car.

[Yoshi Kojima]

Ed says he laughed it off. Kojima told him when he got back to Japan, he would start sending Ed butterflies to sell on ebay for him. He and Kojima kept in touch over email and sometimes talked on the phone.

[Ed Newcomer]

It was hard because this early 2000s, we actually did not have an undercover cell phone to use. We used an undercover hardline, which was located in a special room in the field office in los angeles. So an agent who was doing undercover work Would actually have to go into that room and use the hardline to make undercover phone calls. And the phone was set up to do recordings, and it had an answering machine that sounded like a business and all this stuff, but it was. And that's not ideal, because on a Saturday night or even a weeknight, you, know, there's nobody there, right? I'm not there. So kojima would call sometimes because he's in japan. So time difference would screw us up, too. And he'd get pissed off because he'd keep getting my answering machine. He would get mad at me because I wasn't available when he wanted me to be available. And so he'd stopped talking to me for a week or two, which was really infuriating.

[Yoshi Kojima]

Months passed, and yoshi kojima never sent anything. Ed decided he'd get kojima's attention by setting up his own ebay auctions.

[Ed Newcomer]

And I just decided, you know what? I'm gonna reach out to every agent I know, and I'm gonna ask them to go set up a covert ebay account and bid on my auctions.

[Yoshi Kojima]

He asked other fish and wildlife agents to bid thousands of dollars on his butterflies.

[Ed Newcomer]

I did maybe 14 or 15 of them. They all came off perfectly. And I thought, okay, this is going to work. Kojima's going to come back. He's going to say, where are you getting these? I can supply you with better material. I thought we were working together, that kind of thing. Nope. He reacted as if I was intentionally competing with him.

[Yoshi Kojima]

Ed had used photos that kojima had sent him in his listings. Yoshi kojima told ed he should be ashamed and that he was stealing his photos. He said they were copyrighted. At one point, Kojima told him they were no longer friends.

[Ed Newcomer]

It's like watching a train wreck. I was watching this undercover relationship I had built slowly degrade. And, you know, I'm new, and I'm the only one that's got a case that is slowly but surely on its way into a nose dive into the ground.

[Yoshi Kojima]

And then one day, a california game warden called ed.

[Ed Newcomer]

So this game warden knew that I was investigating a butterfly guy. And he said, hey, I don't know if you know this ted nelson guy, but we got a tip that he's selling illegal butterflies on ebay. And I said, okay, thanks. Can you send me the recording? So he sent it to Me and my whole office listened to it in the conference room. It was obviously Kojima and he had turned me in. And everybody in the room was like, oh dude, your case is over. Because once you report somebody to the Fish and Wildlife Service, you have to assume that an agent's gonna make contact with this Ted Nelson guy and presumably flip him or possibly flip him as an informant. So if after being reported, Ted Nelson continues to be out there on ebay selling or continues to be in communication with Kojima, Kojima is going to naturally assume that Ted Nelson is now an informant and he's not going to work with him or he's not going to tell him anything. So, you know, Kojima wasn't answering any phone calls, he wasn't writing to me, he wasn't calling me anymore. And you know, shoot, I thought the case was done dead.

[Yoshi Kojima]

We'll be right back.

[Phoebe Judge]

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[Yoshi Kojima]

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[Yoshi Kojima]

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[Yoshi Kojima]

Ed Newcomer moved on to other cases. He investigated a case of fish being smuggled in from Indonesia. And he started looking into pigeon breeders in Los Angeles who were killing hawks to protect their birds. And then in 2006, he got a new tip. Another insect dealer said he had news. He'd heard that Yoshi Kojima was coming back to the Bug Fair.

[Ed Newcomer]

So I said, well, we gotta give it one more try, right? We're gonna give it. We're gonna give it our all.

[Yoshi Kojima]

At the time, he was in the middle of another undercover case.

[Ed Newcomer]

I had a big, beefy kind of biker mustache at the time, and I didn't wash my hair very often.

[Yoshi Kojima]

At the Bug Fair, Ed tried to find a way to run into Kojima. He waited in the passage between two.

[Ed Newcomer]

Of the exhibition halls, and there was no way we were not going to run into each other. And, yeah, we did. And he looked surprised and scared, which really kind of struck me. I think he was afraid. I knew he had turned me into the Fish and Wildlife Service Service.

[Phoebe Judge]

And. And what did it. What happened?

[Ed Newcomer]

I was like, open arms, like I was so happy to see him. And I said, hey, man, I owe you a huge, huge thank you. I said, look, back when you and I were meeting, you gave me advice about what to do if Fish and Wildlife ever came to my house, which he did. He did give me some advice about what to say or what to do if Fish and Wildlife ever reached out and asked me where I was getting these. These things. And I said, look, you're not going to believe this, Yosi, but some turned me into Fish and Wildlife guys. And these officers came to my house, and they asked me a lot of questions, and I did exactly what you told me to do. I didn't keep any material at my house. And I told them, I don't know what they're talking about. And they left, and they left me alone. And he. His whole demeanor changed instantly. He was so thrilled that he had given me advice that helped me. And I think at that moment, too, he viewed me now as a criminal. He's like, okay, Ted Nelson is also a butterfly crook. And he said, well, are you still selling? And I said, oh, yeah.

[Yoshi Kojima]

Ed told him he was working with a man from Germany who was sending him rare butterflies, but they Kept showing up with broken wings and broken antennas.

[Ed Newcomer]

And he said, hey, let's go to lunch. So we. We went out to this Korean barbecue place in somewhere in Koreatown in Los Angeles. In the course of that lunch, he said, look, I'm going to go back to Japan. He goes, have you ever heard of Skype? And this is like at the, you know, front end of video conference calling and stuff. So Skype was it. And I said, yeah, I've heard Skype. So he goes, you need to sign up for Skype. We can talk in real time. I'll be in Japan. I can use Skype to show you what I've got in my inventory, and you can tell me if you want it. And probably about a week after he got back to Japan, the calls start in earnest. So I'm working during the day. I get home, I'm married at the time. I have dinner, and then I pretty much wait for the Kojima call. I had to go in a separate room in the house. My, you know, now ex wife could not make any noise. You know, he didn't think I was married. So he can't have her seen on the Skype video in the background. She can't come into that room. She's off to bed. I'm still talking to Kojima on Skype. It was. It was hard. And basically sometime in there, during that, those calls, I realized Kojima's got some type of an attraction to me.

[Yoshi Kojima]

Sometimes Yoshikojima would make comments about finding Ed attractive. He asked if Ed was bisexual. He tried to show him porn.

[Ed Newcomer]

It's a very awkward situation to be in when you're doing undercover work. I'd play it off.

[Yoshi Kojima]

Eventually, Kojima started sending Ed butterflies. He sent swallowtail butterflies that are so rare they're only found on Corsica and Sardinia, and peacock swallowtails that live high up in the mountains in the Philippines. Researchers don't know how many are left. He even sent two Queen Alexandra's bird wings. At last count, researchers estimated there were 21 left in the wild.

[Ed Newcomer]

He has sold me every one of the most endangered butterflies in the world, including a $10,000 Ornithoptera alexandria. In total, he's offered to sell me $300,000 worth of butterflies. And every single one of those offers to sell is a violation of the Endangered Species Act.

[Yoshi Kojima]

Ed brought the butterflies and the recordings of his Skype calls to the U.S. attorney's office. They convened a grand jury, which eventually indicted Yoshi Kojima on 17 counts of illegally selling and smuggling endangered wildlife.

[Ed Newcomer]

I think maybe 13 of those counts were straight up smuggling, which carries, you know, a twenty year maximum sentence and a two hundred fifty thousand dollar maximum fine on each count. So we've got an indictment and an arrest warrant in hand. The only thing we need to do now is get our hands on Kojima and he's in Japan.

[Yoshi Kojima]

The next time Kojima said something suggestive to him on a Skype call, Ed replied, not until you come to LA and laughed. On July 31, 2006, Ed got a call from U. S. Customs that Kojima was on a plane that was going to land in Los Angeles in less than an hour. A team of agents went to the airport. Right away, Kojima was arrested as he came out of customs, Ed watched the arrest from behind a pillar. He wanted to make sure Kojima couldn't see him. Later, Ed went to the jail where Kojima was being held before his first court appearance.

[Ed Newcomer]

He was really excited to see me. And then he looked down, he saw the special agent badge attached to my belt right by my holster. He didn't say anything to me, but I basically escorted him through this long tunnel that goes from the Bureau of Prisons lockup over to the courthouse. And he says, have you been official wildlife guy the whole time I've known you? And I was like, yep. He kind of put his head down. He didn't say anything else. He never asked me any questions about how it all happened. It was weird. It was just like we had this relationship. And then I arrested him and the relationship was over.

[Yoshi Kojima]

It had been three years since their first meeting at the bug Fair. Yoshi Kojima pled guilty to all 17 counts of selling and smuggling endangered species. He was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison and fined almost $39,000. When he was released in 2008, he was deported back to Japan.

[Ed Newcomer]

If you're a foreign national and you're convicted of a felony and deported, you can never return to the United States. So he cannot come into the US period, ever. And so, yeah, I've never seen him again. I've heard some stories. Last I heard, he was selling antiques. That's the last I heard.

[Yoshi Kojima]

Nine years after Yoshi Kojima was arrested in 2015, a 25 year old man named Alexander Bick was arrested at the Los Angeles International airport. He had 150 endangered butterflies in his luggage, including birdwing butterflies. Fish and Wildlife had asked Ed to join the investigation because of his experience with butterfly smuggling cases. Ed interviewed Alexander Bick when he was arrested.

[Ed Newcomer]

And I take him into an interview room read him his rights and I ask him if he wants to talk. He starts lying immediately about about the whole situation. Out of nowhere he goes, hey, have you heard of Yoshi Kojima? I said, yeah, I've heard of Yoshi. And he goes, he was my, you know, he's my mentor.

[Yoshi Kojima]

Yoshi Kojima has not agreed to any interviews since he was released from prison. Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Roberson, Jackie Sajiko, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison and Megan Kinane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see [e-mail] and you can sign up for our [e-mail] Newsletter. We hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program Criminal. Plus, you can listen to Criminal, this is Love and Phoebe reads a Mystery without any ads. Plus you'll get bonus episodes. These are special episodes with me and Criminal co creator Lauren Spohr talking about everything from how we make our episodes to the crime stories that caught our attention that week, to things we've been enjoying lately. To learn more, go to thisiscriminal.com plus we're on Facebook and Twitter iminalshow and Instagram criminalpodcast. We're also on [e-mail] criminal podcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows@podcast voxmedia.com I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

[Ed Newcomer]

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