Introducing: Catching The Codfather, Part 1

Summary

Podcast Summary: Uncover Presents “Catching the Codfather,” Part 1

Podcast: The Cult Queen of Canada from Uncover (CBC)
Episode: Introducing: Catching The Codfather, Part 1
Date: April 6, 2026
Host: Ian Koss
**Featured: Carlos Rafael (“the Codfather”), Maria Tomasia, Rodney Avila, Gary Studds, Ron Mullet

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Uncover introduces the new GBH News series Catching the Codfather, a deep dive into the life, crimes, and legacy of notorious Boston-area fishing mogul Carlos Rafael. The series investigates how Rafael, known as the “Codfather,” built and lost an empire by operating outside (and often against) the bounds of both law and regulation. The episode explores themes of the American dream, immigrant ambition, government regulation, and the fine line between entrepreneurship and criminality. Using archival history and firsthand interviews, it traces the intertwined rise of Rafael and the American fishing industry, culminating in crime, investigation, and moral ambiguity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction to Carlos Rafael and the Crime (00:50–06:53)

• Carlos Rafael’s Reluctant Legacy:
  Rafael describes his attempt to hand off his $100M fishing empire to his daughter, who rejects it due to the overwhelming sacrifice required.

  • Carlos: “If you get the American dream, it’s a certain amount of sacrifice you gotta make. …Luck doesn’t come to you. And by luck is work your butt off in America and you will get ahead." (02:52)

• Self-Perception as the ‘Bad Guy’:
  Rafael, surrounded by Scarface memorabilia, likens himself to Tony Montana, rejected by polite society but essential for its prosperity.

  • Carlos (channeling Scarface): "You need people like me so you can point your fingers… that’s the bad guy." (05:58)

2. Immigrant Background: The Making of a ‘Codfather’ (09:17–13:06)

• Rafael’s parents send him to a monastery to avoid Portuguese colonial wars. He engineers his expulsion to hasten an escape to America.

  • Carlos: “So everybody went up to the dorm, I went to the football field and I jumped the fence… the priest was upstairs waiting for me. He says, you’ll be an expel tomorrow.” (10:27)

• Arrives in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a Portuguese immigrant hub, in 1968. He vows to never work for someone else and instead build something of his own.

  • Carlos: “I always said to myself, I am not going to be working for anybody else all my life. I’m going to do this for myself.” (12:26)

3. The New Bedford Fishing Industry & Ethnic Ties (13:12–17:44)

• New Bedford’s history as a fishing port, its Portuguese community, and its role in the American seafood industry.
• By the 1970s, the local fleet (mostly Portuguese) faces crisis as foreign ‘floating factories’ deplete fish stocks just off the coast.
  • Rodney Avila: “I used to see miles and miles and miles of these ships. They look like big cruise ships.” (17:05)

4. Regulation, Opportunity, and the Magnuson Act (18:04–33:51)

• Introduction of Congressman Gary Studds, a key figure in pushing for the Americanization of fishing waters via the 200-mile limit.

  • Studds’s efforts to pass the Magnuson Act, which reserved fisheries for American boats and sparked a boom fueled by federal subsidies.
  • Memorable congressional farce about whether lobsters are “creatures of the shelf.”
    • Studds: “[The State Department] testified… the lobster was not a creature of the continental shelf because when the lobster was excited, it jumped up and down and left the ocean floor.” (21:38)

• The local fleet doubles, fishing technology modernizes, and a wave of investment lands.

• Carlos: “I went to the owner and I told him, I’m giving you two months to get somebody to replace me because I’m going to do this for myself.” (27:07)

5. The Downside of Regulation: Government Enters the Living Room (35:02–37:22)

• The original promise is followed by ever-tightening regulations as fish stocks fall again decades later.
• Carlos’s empire expands even as the industry around him shrinks under draconian rules.
  • Rodney Avila (Carlos’s uncle): “Once you let the government into your living room, it’s like your mother in law coming to visit you. You never get them out.” (35:02)

6. The Sting and Downfall (38:22–47:49)

• In 2015, Carlos tries to cash out. “Russian investors” approach him about buying his business; they are actually undercover federal agents.

• The investigation is fueled by suspicions about Carlos’s extraordinary growth while the industry is shrinking.

  • Ron Mullet (IRS): “Some agencies thought he was involved in human trafficking or smuggling. Some people thought it was drugs… Nobody could figure out what it was.” (40:34)

• Under pressure to justify a $175M asking price, Carlos openly reveals a second set of “cash” books to the undercover agents—proof of widespread fraud, not drugs.

  • Carlos: “I got another set of books…and he put it on the desk right here. Tell me it’s not worth $175 million.” (45:36)
  • Carlos (reflecting on being caught): “I do not know. You could be the fucking IRS any. This could be a fucking cluster. So I’m trusting you… I’ll regret that for the rest of my life. They son of a bitches.” (47:49)

7. Why Cheat? Carlos’s Rationalization (51:02–51:28)

• Carlos justifies his cheating as a defense of his workers and a response to regulatory ‘force.’
  • Carlos: “It was not for the money… They forced me to cheat.” (51:28)
  • Ian: “So you felt like you had to break the law in order to protect the people who worked for you?”
    Carlos: “No questions asked. …They forced me to do it.” (51:23–51:28)

8. The Complex Legacy (52:09–End)

• Carlos emerges as a divisive figure: folk hero, villain, or necessary rebel. Many root for him—others detest him.
  • Ian: “Who is Carlos Rafael really? A folk hero? A crook? A righteous rebel? A selfish con man?” (52:44)
• The episode sets up future installments as an exploration of regulation, moral ambiguity, and the true cost of chasing the American Dream.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Carlos Rafael on the American Dream:
  “But if you get the American dream, it’s a certain amount of sacrifice… Luck doesn’t come to you. And by luck is work your butt off in America and you will get ahead.” (02:52)

• On Regulation:
  “Once you let the government into your living room, it’s like your mother in law coming to visit you. You never get them out.” – Rodney Avila (35:02)

• On Self-Justification:
  “It was not for the money... They forced me to cheat.” – Carlos Rafael (51:28)

• On Moral Complexity:
  “If he wasn’t born crooked, he must have learned it before he could talk.” (52:34)
  “Do you blame him for what he did? Do you think what he did is wrong? No, I don’t. No, I don’t.” (52:44)

• Gary Studds on Washington’s Cluelessness (re: lobsters):
  “The Department of State had verified that when the lobster was excited, it jumped up and down and left the ocean floor. …I asked if they thought the kangaroo was a creature of the earth, and there was no response whatsoever.” (21:38)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:50–06:53: Rafael’s family legacy, Scarface comparison, self-perceived role as “bad guy”
• 09:17–13:06: Rafael’s youth in the Azores, emigration, vow to succeed
• 13:12–17:44: Portrait of New Bedford’s fishing community, ethnic breakdown, early economic crisis
• 18:04–33:51: Gary Studds, the Magnuson Act, the economic boom of the American fleet
• 35:02–37:22: Regulatory clampdowns and their unintended consequences
• 38:22–47:49: Federal sting, undercover operation, Rafael’s exposure of fraudulent practices
• 51:02–51:28: Rafael’s rationale for criminal behavior
• 52:09–end: Community perception and the episode’s call to ponder questions of morality and regulation

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Tone and Language

The episode is immersive, vivid, and pointed—balancing hard-nosed investigation with dark humor and moral inquiry. Rafael’s voice is profane, defiant, and unrepentant, while the host guides listeners to consider wider implications beyond the individual story, challenging assumptions on regulation, justice, and the American Dream.

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Conclusion

This gripping introductory episode intertwines true crime intrigue with cultural history and economic analysis, using Carlos Rafael’s life as a lens on broader questions of ambition, regulation, and rebellion. It promises deeper exploration of the tension between personal drive and government oversight—essential listening for those interested in crime, industry, and the messy underbelly of the American dream.

Transcript

[Ian Koss]

A better help ad. Hold on one second. I just need to. What if you had a room where no one interrupts? No notifications, no expectations, just space to talk with. BetterHelp Therapy happens in a space that's yours. Visit betterhelp.comrandompodcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy. This is a CBC podcast. A few years ago, I read about a case of phishing fraud close to where I live in Boston, Massachusetts. It involved undercover agents, secret tape recordings, and a shadowy figure known locally as the Codfather. I was intrigued. I mean, who wouldn't be? And by the time I read about the case, the Codfather himself was back out of jail. So I looked him up, gave him a call. To my surprise, he picked up. To my greater surprise, he invited me down to his office to talk. And very quickly, what I thought might be a colorful little story about a crooked fisherman turned into something much, much more complicated. My name is Ian Koss. I'm the host of the new series Catching the Codfather from GBH News. And. And today on Uncover, we're bringing you the first episode of that series. We begin in that office right by the docks the day we first met. Can you tell me about how you did ultimately get arrested?

[Carlos Rafael]

This all started a few years back when I wanted to sell my business, see my legacy. It was to grow this to a point that I would turn it over to my kids. I did it. That said, I'm done. I wanted to give the business to my. My middle daughter. And I told her, Stephanie, I was 62 at the time. I said, stephanie, daddy style, I had enough. I'm gonna give you the business. I don't want no money. At the end of the year, the profits you split with your sisters, it's yours. So she looks at me and she says, do you think I want the kind of life you have? And she didn't want a company over 100 million just for the.

[Ian Koss]

Can you blame her?

[Carlos Rafael]

No, no, no. Because I see what I did to my family. I never get to spend time with them. I never get to go to the school place and all this other. You can buy those things back. It's over. But if you get the American dream, it's a certain amount of sacrifice you gotta make. It doesn't come from heaven. And they say, lock, lock. You have to go look for luck. Luck doesn't come to you. And by luck is work your butt off in America and you will get ahead. I don't want that kind of life. Are you Crazy. So that's why I ended up getting in a shader. Because if I want to get out at 62, none of this would happen.

[Ian Koss]

Carlos Rafael leans back and lights a cigarette, one of many. Over the course of our conversation. Could you talk about all the Scarface pictures?

[Carlos Rafael]

My daughter gave me that one. She bought that one in New York.

[Ian Koss]

Carlos's office is covered with images from the movie Scarface. There's an actual cigar from the set, a hand drawn sketch of Tony Montana, the cocaine kingpin, and a still from the film of Al Pacino in the big hot tub. Carlos told me that Netflix once approached him about making a movie about his life and asked who should play him. Carlos didn't need to think about it. It was obvious.

[Carlos Rafael]

I said, scafix. He'll be the only one could do the job the right way.

[Ian Koss]

Al Pacino.

[Carlos Rafael]

Al Pacino.

[Ian Koss]

So you can picture an older Pacino if you want, but with jowls hanging under his chin and totally bald except for the sides of his head. That's Carlos. And what did the producer from Netflix say?

[Carlos Rafael]

Nah, I asked him for When I mentioned $20 million, the guy, I said, forget it. Look, if I'm gonna, something's gonna get done. I want money.

[Ian Koss]

And you'll see as we go along. There are some parallels for sure, between Carlos Rafael and Tony Montana. It's the story of an immigrant who has to make his own luck and is willing to push that luck again and again and again. Hunger, opportunity, excess. Ruin. There's a famous scene in the movie when Montana is out to dinner and and gets in a heated argument. It's at a fancy restaurant, everyone's very well dressed, lawyers and bankers. And they all fall silent, watching as Montana lunges across the table, spilling wine and food all over the white tablecloth. But then Montana turns and addresses the crowd directly, calls out their silent judgment of him, saying, you need people like me.

[Carlos Rafael]

You need people like me so you can point your fingers. Fingers, I say. That's the bad guy.

[Ian Koss]

Then he asks, so what does that make you? Good? You're not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie.

[Carlos Rafael]

Me, I don't have that problem.

[Ian Koss]

When he's done, Montana stumbles out shouting over his shoulder, say good night to the bad guy. I can hear a little of Carlos in that scene. Even after he was investigated and labeled a crook, after federal agents carted him off to jail and dismantled his empire, he keeps pointing his finger right back at the government that brought him down, saying that right there, that is the

[Carlos Rafael]

real bad Guy, they think they solved the problem, haven't solved shit. Because fishermen are a lot smarter than they are.

[Ian Koss]

From GBH News, this is the Big Dig. I'm Ian Coss. Carlos Rafael is an American success story. He started from nothing, working in a neglected industry in a neglected city. And he built something real. His business was fish Carlos Seafood. And by the end of his run, he owned the biggest fleet of boats in the most valuable fishing port in America. So why did it all come crashing down? And why does Carlos insist to this day that he did nothing wrong? Welcome to season three, Catching the Codfather. It's a story about work, about dreams, and ultimately about how all of us relate with our government. Part one Red Lobster. Carlos Raphael grew up in the Azores, a string of islands in the Atlantic that are maybe a quarter of the way to North America if you're coming from Europe. So way out there and small enough that you have to really zoom in on the map in order to see them at all. The Azores are part of Portugal. And in the 1960s, when Carlos was a kid, Portugal was fighting colonial wars on several fronts. In Mozambique, in Angola, in Guinea. Carlos had friends who were drafted off their tiny island and sent abroad, who died in the jungle fighting for a lost and distant cause, A pointless cause. His parents did not want that for their son. So they sent young Carlos to study at a monastery.

[Carlos Rafael]

That's the way they would keep me off the military fest, in a monastery.

[Ian Koss]

I have to. I mean, I've only known you for about an hour, but it's hard for me to picture you in a monastery.

[Carlos Rafael]

All my friends says what a hell of a priest you would have made. But once my sister, she told me, dead as an American passport.

[Ian Koss]

Carlos's dad had an American passport. This revelation is not entirely surprising in a place where lots of families move back and forth to the us. But it was news to Carlos. Infuriating news, because it meant his dad had an easy out all along and was so comfortable in his island life, he just didn't want to take it and instead sent his son to a monastery.

[Carlos Rafael]

I freaked out. I said, oh yeah, we going to America? Says, you know, you're not going to America because you stayed at a monastery. That's where they put you here. So I did so they could threw me out.

[Ian Koss]

Every night the priests in training would have dinner, then go to prayer, and by 9:30 they'll go up to their dormitory.

[Carlos Rafael]

So everybody went up to the dorm, I went to the football field and I jumped the fence. I like to Cough.

[Ian Koss]

Carlos didn't care about actually getting away with this little escape act. He wanted to get caught. He wanted to get punished.

[Carlos Rafael]

Didn't go too far. I went for a walk until I was about a quarter of 11. When I come back, I jumped the fence. And I come back. Well, little I know that the priest was upstairs waiting for me. He says, you'll be an expel tomorrow. I'm calling your parents and we shipping you back home.

[Ian Koss]

Now Carlos would find out if his gambit paid off. It looked like either way, he was leaving the Azores. Could be for the US could be for Angola. Which one was up to his father.

[Carlos Rafael]

So I was terrified to get home. I said, he's gonna beat the leafing crab out of me. My father says, I'm gonna teach you a lesson. We're not going any place. He's the one. He was in the right place. He should have stood there and all that. But there was my mother. She every day would be humming at him, and she says, you know what's gonna happen if he goes? He'll probably come in the Coffin.

[Ian Koss]

Carlos was 15 at this point. At 16, he would register for the draft.

[Carlos Rafael]

So after she keep battling and battling this side to Camilla.

[Ian Koss]

So you got out just before your 16th birthday.

[Carlos Rafael]

I got here in March. June would have been too late.

[Ian Koss]

Carlos boarded a TWA flight and followed the same route across the sea that people from the Azores had taken for generations to the small coastal city of New Bedford, Massachusetts. The flight attendant gave him a little set of plastic wings he could pin on his shirt. He was proud of those wings, proud to be starting fresh, proud to be in America, finally free.

[Carlos Rafael]

When I arrived in the United States in 1968, I always said to myself, I am not going to be working for anybody else all my life. I'm going to do this for myself.

[Ian Koss]

And it turned out that Carlos was arriving at the right time. A time of crisis, actually, for the industry that defined New Bedford. But as Carlos himself has told me, a crisis. Now, that is when you can make a lot of money. And Carlos Rafael would do just that.

[Gary Studds]

Throughout the world, New Bedford, Massachusetts, is best known as the whaling city.

[Ian Koss]

New Bedford, as you may know, is the port that inspired Moby Dick and where the author Herman Melville set out on his own whaling voyage.

[Gary Studds]

The first whale ship, the Dartmouth, sailed out of this port.

[Ian Koss]

But if you stepped off a boat there in the 1960s, when Carlos arrived and wandered into the neighborhoods along county street or Rivet street, you'd find a very different world from the one Melville knew.

[Maria Tomasia]

That entire area was all Portuguese.

[Ian Koss]

Maria Tomasia, like Carlos Rafael, came to New Bedford from the Azores.

[Maria Tomasia]

It's like every island or every tower had their own club. You know, there's the Ponte Delgado Club, there's the Faial Club, there's the Medires Club. There's a Fisherman Club, Central Luzo Club. So everybody had their place to socialize.

[Ian Koss]

There were two Portuguese newspapers. There was a Portuguese radio station, a dedicated Portuguese library with over 3,3000 titles in it. This was the capital of Portuguese North America. The Portuguese immigration here started in the Moby Dick era, the middle of the 1800s. Whaling ships out of New Bedford would stop in the Azores and Cape Verde to pick up supplies. People got on board as well. And then more people followed and more

[Maria Tomasia]

people, and they saw there was a fishing industry. You lived by the water, you know, once you live by the water, it's very difficult to go anyplace else and not see that water.

[Ian Koss]

By 1970, Massachusetts was home to one third of all Portuguese immigrants in the entire country. And most of those people were clustered in the coastline near New Bedford. Within the fishing industry itself, there's actually an interesting ethnic divide. Historically, at least for many years, the scallop boats tended to be run by Norwegian immigrants. But the draggers, the boats that went after bottom fish like cod and flounder, they were overwhelmingly Portuguese, 80 to 90%, by one estimate. They will be the focus of this story. In the 1970s, when Carlos was still new in town, those fishermen were in trouble.

[Maria Tomasia]

I would be mostly as a translator.

[Ian Koss]

The man the fisherman went to for help was Maria Tomasia's boss, New Bedford Congressman Gary Studs.

[Maria Tomasia]

We were concerned about the fact that, you know, there were other people out there,

[Ian Koss]

other people out there, other people competing for the same cod, haddock, and flounder off the coast of New England, but with bigger boats, bigger nets. What the fishermen described was a foreign invasion.

[Maria Tomasia]

That's how they would talk about it. They felt that they were taking away what was theirs.

[Ian Koss]

Okay, coming up, we've got a Russian Midwater trawler about 12 and a half miles off the coast. It's a little hard to imagine now, but in the 1970s, foreign fishing boats could come as close as 12 miles off the coast, and they could catch whatever they wanted. This audio is from a Coast Guard flyover just off Cape Cod. There were German boats, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, all drawn to the rich coastal waters of New England. And because they were so far from port, these ships were essentially floating factories. They filleted Froze or canned the fish right on board. Working for months at a time on

[Carlos Rafael]

a massive scale, probably averaging somewhere in

[Ian Koss]

the neighborhood of say, 35 to 40 tons a day.

[Rodney Avila]

I used to see miles and miles and miles of these ships. They look like big cruise ships.

[Ian Koss]

Rodney Avila was a young fisherman at the time, just starting out.

[Rodney Avila]

And I used to say, I'm going to have no fish when I grow up.

[Gary Studds]

Modern trawling techniques are sweeping everything from the sea.

[Ian Koss]

This foreign presence really ramped up over the 1960s, so that by the mid-70s, if you looked at the total catch on New England's very best fishing grounds, 90% of it was pulled up by foreign boats. 90%. And the fishermen and scientists alike could see the effects.

[Carlos Rafael]

Disappeared like the heartache had already disappeared. The butterfishes all disappeared, the flukers all disappeared.

[Maria Tomasia]

And that's how the whole thing came into being is that they wanted something done about it.

[Ian Koss]

That's where Congressman Gary Studds came in.

[Gary Studds]

For several of the reasons that I cited in my brief remarks, I think that the time is right to ask to extend these protections.

[Ian Koss]

One, the Canadian Studs was always a bit of an odd fit to represent the working class Portuguese hub of New Bedford. He was formal, clean cut, Yale educated. In pictures of him from the 1970s, he looks like he could be in the 1950s with black horn rimmed glasses and plain suits.

[Gary Studds]

Decisions to make with some resources still available to protect.

[Ian Koss]

And, and on top of all that, Gary Studds was also concealing the fact that he was gay. The suggestive term people used for him at the time was a confirmed bachelor. Not a strong political brand in those days, but Studs was driven.

[Maria Tomasia]

When I first met him, he introduced himself in Portuguese.

[Ian Koss]

So when he ran for that seat, Studs took a six week intensive course in Portuguese, then spent another six weeks traveling around the Azores, Cape Verde and mainland Portugal.

[Maria Tomasia]

Omari Convazos, you know. Yeah, so that type of thing, it's. You've gotten anything good lately.

[Ian Koss]

In 1973, New Bedford sent Studs to Washington as their representative. And in that very first term, he also landed a seat on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries committee, which meant he was actually in a perfect position to do something about the whole foreign invasion issue. So that same year, Studs teamed up with Congressman Don Young from Alaska to introduce what they like to call the Young Studs bill, but was commonly known as the 200 mile bill. This will probably be something like a 200 mile economic zone. It would establish a new ocean boundary that foreign vessels could not cross. An invisible fence exactly 200 miles offshore. And inside that fence, our richest fishing grounds would be reserved exclusively for American boats.

[Gary Studds]

A 200 mile extension of US coastal jurisdiction.

[Ian Koss]

You would think that bill would be an easy win. I mean, who would oppose kicking out foreign fishing boats? Gary Studs was about to find out.

[Gary Studds]

The problem, as it has so often been in subsequent years, was the United States Department of State.

[Ian Koss]

And it turns out the bad guy in this story is the U.S. department of State, which makes some sense. The diplomats wanted to resolve these fishery issues diplomatically with an international treaty. They did not want to just unilaterally draw a line in the ocean. It could impact trade, military movement, intelligence gathering. Studs was saying, it can't wait. By the time a big international treaty is ratified, the fish will be gone. That's when Studs realized there was a deeper problem underneath it all.

[Gary Studds]

I discovered that the biggest problem that those of us who represent maritime areas have was that nobody in Washington knew anything about it. And the best example I can think

[Ian Koss]

of this is Studs recalling the story in a speech a few years later where he gave a specific example to illustrate the challenge. For years, Studs had tried to get the American lobster designated as a, quote, creature of the shelf, meaning it lived, as the name implies, on the continental shelf and could be protected from foreign fishing boats.

[Gary Studds]

We held hearings to find out why the State Department had not designated the lobster to be a creature of the shelf. And the State Department, I kid you not, came in and testified. I can still picture them, three men there they were, all lined up in very, very fancy three piece suits to inform the House Committee on Merchant Marine Fisheries that the lobster was not a creature of the continental shelf. Because international law defined a creature of the shelf as an animal which never left the ocean floor, and that the State Department had verified that when the lobster was excited, it jumped up and down and left the ocean floor. Now I am. I wish I could tell you I was exaggerating to make a point, but I am not. I asked the Department of State if they thought the kangaroo was a creature of the earth and there was no response whatsoever. I threatened on several occasions to put an unpegged lobster on the witness table in front of them to see if any of them had ever met one. I seriously doubt it. Washington is populated by people who think that lobsters are red and that is the source or at least the symbol of a great many of the problems that we have had over the years in trying to accomplish things.

[Ian Koss]

If you don't know lobsters when they are alive and uncooked are not red, they're greenish brown. That year the bill went nowhere and the foreign harvest of the seafloor went on. Carlos Raphael is in his early 20s at this point. He's been in the country for maybe five years. And while Gary Studs is learning the ways of Washington, Carlos is learning the trade of a fish cutter. What does it take to cut a fish?

[Carlos Rafael]

What does it take? A little bit of knowledge. But you learn as you learn, you get to it and once you get to it, I mean the, the name of the game is sharpen your knife.

[Ian Koss]

Carlos started out working under a Cape Verdean man who showed him how to hone his blade until it was so sharp he could shave the hairs off his forearm.

[Carlos Rafael]

Once you got a gig of it, once you know what you're doing and you got a sharp knife, then it's like ice cream, it's easy.

[Ian Koss]

In an eight hour shift, each fish cutter was supposed to fill 16 boxes, 125 pounds each. So 2,000 pounds of fish a day. Three. An average cutter.

[Carlos Rafael]

I won't say I was the best one in a city, but I bet you I was the four of the fifth best in the city. As a fish cutter I would cut 20, 22, sometimes 24 boxes by 2, 2:30 in the afternoon. So I would go into the men's room upstairs, I would sit and smoke a cigarette and the boss would come, gets your butt to work and said I'm not going to work now, I'm having a cigarette. You've been here for 20 minutes. This is too bad, you're fire. So I must have got fire 50 times working for this company. But he could never fire me because I was almost way over.

[Ian Koss]

As Carlos said before, he did not come to this country to work for someone else. This was not his American dream. But it was also not a great time to strike out on his own. Even from the floor of the fish plant, Carlos could tell the industry was in trouble.

[Carlos Rafael]

You know, not much fish around and so forth. We're going through a crisis with.

[Ian Koss]

Back then catches were down. Some species had virtually disappeared. And Gary Studds knew all this too. So Studs came back around for, for another try, this time smarter.

[Gary Studds]

The presence of the foreign fleets out there who were literally raping the resource. The Eastern bloc countries, the Soviets.

[Ian Koss]

This time, Studs mounted a public campaign for the 200 mile bill. He held hearings. He met personally with President Ford. He teamed up with a whole fleet of fishing boats that sailed down the coast and up the Potomac to D.C. the Foreign Fishing activity and the campaign worked legislation under which the United States laid claim to a 200 mile limit on its coastal waters. This time the bill passed. And in 1976, 50 years ago, Gerald Ford signed what became known as the Magnuson act after Warren Magnuson, the senator who co sponsored it. Today, I guarantee you any fishing captain in the country will will know exactly what you mean if you say the name Magnuson. One of Stud's staff members told me that years later, as the Magnuson act became increasingly controversial, Studs would sometimes say, thank God they didn't name it after me. Around the time the 200 mile limit went into effect, Carlos Rafael became the foreman of the fish plant, running the whole operation. It was clear that kicking out the foreign boats would be good for the local fleet. And pretty quickly he made his next move.

[Carlos Rafael]

I went to the owner and I told him, I'm giving you two months to get somebody to replace me because I'm going to do this for myself or you're never going to make it. That's your opinion. We will see if I make it or not.

[Ian Koss]

The rebellious teenager who ran away from the monastery and cherished his plastic wings was going to follow through on his promise to work for himself in America.

[Carlos Rafael]

I went to a friend, I asked him for five thousand dollar loan. I asked for ten, but he had the time. He says, carlos, I don't have 10, but I got five if he'd help you. I said five will have to do. And I had 27 cents left of my own.

[Ian Koss]

That was the beginning of Carlos seafood, just with $5,000.27. And truly, Carlos timing was very, very good.

[Gary Studds]

Now, with extended jurisdiction, the fishing industry is booming again.

[Ian Koss]

Because after the 200 mile limit went into effect and the foreign fleets were gone, Congressman Studs helped use federal money to usher in a golden age for the New Bedford fleet.

[Rodney Avila]

The government came down with his government guaranteed loan again.

[Ian Koss]

RODNEY AVILA New BEDFORD FISHERMAN so if

[Rodney Avila]

you could prove that you were a fisherman, they'd loan you all the money you wanted to buy a boat.

[Ian Koss]

Interest rates at that time were quite high. If you were buying a house, you might pay 10%, 15% interest. But if you were buying a fishing boat, it was basically free money.

[Rodney Avila]

I had a guy approach me to build 34 boats. He says, all you'll do is sit over and manage the boats and I'll do all the rest.

[Ian Koss]

So it almost turned fishing boats into like an investment asset, Operations.

[Rodney Avila]

Exactly. Accountants bought boats, lawyers bought boats. I know a dentist that owned boats. I know a used car salesman that owned the boat. And the catching was good because there was a lot of fish around.

[Ian Koss]

Remember, 90% of the fishing pressure had just been removed in some areas. So at this point, overfishing was not really a concern. How could our dinky little fleet even approach the damage that those floating factories had done? So you took that $5,000, 20, 27 cents, what did you buy? What did you set up?

[Carlos Rafael]

I would buy fish at night from the fishing vessels. Lobsters, monkfish, scallops.

[Ian Koss]

At first, Carlos was just a small time dealer, a middleman scouting for side deals around the docks.

[Carlos Rafael]

I would buy during the night, I go sell it in the next day, get the check, go catch the check and go pay the fisherman.

[Ian Koss]

But in those days, if you were making money in fishing, you'd be stupid to not put that money into a boat. So that's what Carlos did. He bought two boats, in fact, and I should clarify, Carlos did not captain those boats. He never captained his boats. In fact, Carlos told me he went out to sea just once, right around this time.

[Carlos Rafael]

And I swore I'll never go again. Why? Because that's not fit for human beings.

[Ian Koss]

Carlos got so seasick on that trip, he offered to pay for all the extra fuel if the captain would just drop him off at the closest port. He literally let leapt off the boat as it approached the dock. And from that point on, Carlos Rafael was not a fisherman, he was a businessman.

[Carlos Rafael]

So I think I did pretty good. But I would work 20 hours a day, 18 hour days. I didn't have no, no breaks.

[Gary Studds]

Vast quantities of valuable, healthy protein can now be harvested by the US industry if it expands its capabilities.

[Ian Koss]

From 1976 to 1982, the New England fishing fleet doubled in size from 600 boats to 1200 boats. And it wasn't just about the total number. These were bigger boats with more powerful engines. They were made of steel instead of wood. They had new nets, new fish finding technology. The skipper stays close to the cabin

[Gary Studds]

during the tow, watching a remarkable collection of electronic instruments.

[Ian Koss]

If you ever look at footage or pictures of fishing boats, you can spot the differences right away on the older boats. The pilothouse, the enclosed area, is way in the back with the open deck space in front, because the crews would haul nets on board by hand over the side. The modern boats have a pilot house toward the front, so they can pull their nets up from the back of the boat with a hydraulic winch.

[Gary Studds]

Finally, the net comes winding back onto the overhead drum and the fish are shaken down into the caught end.

[Ian Koss]

It was like the leap from propeller planes to jet engines. A whole new era, a new generation of technology. Demand for seafood was growing very fast at that time. And so Magnuson offered a chance for the US industry to modernize, to reclaim its ocean food chain. Studs himself called Magnuson a rebirth for the fishing industry. And locally, at least, he was a hero. Please give a rousing New Bedford welcome to Congressman Gary Studs. I talked to one congressional staffer who told me that he knew people in New Bedford who would display a picture of Studs in their home right next to a picture of the Pope.

[Maria Tomasia]

And that's what Gary Studs was for. That was their savior because they loved them.

[Gary Studds]

This fishing industry has known times in the past when everyone thought all was lost.

[Ian Koss]

Maria Tomasia remembered that later on, when Stud's sexuality was revealed, that as part of a congressional probe, when he was publicly censured and when he chose to run for office again as the first openly gay congressman in American history, even then, the city and the Portuguese community did not turn on him.

[Maria Tomasia]

As soon as they saw him, they would start yelling and applauding. And I was like, unbelievable.

[Ian Koss]

You have to understand that for coastal communities, the Magnuson act was like the New Deal, because each new boat employed a crew, each crewman supported a family, and together they supported a whole waterfront economy and all of its members.

[Gary Studds]

We believe that the future of this city and the future of this fleet and the future of this future of this industry will match in magnitude its magnificent past. Good luck to us all.

[Maria Tomasia]

So it was just tremendous in every way. Everybody was benefiting from it. And that's what the America dream was about.

[Ian Koss]

Carlos Rafael and Rodney Avila were part of of a whole generation who rode the Magnuson wave. To this day, you can walk along the harbor in New Bedford and see the boats they built from 1978, 79, 1980, the boom times. But for the fishing industry, Magnuson was always a fian bargain. They asked the government to get involved in their business to formalize what had been informal, to regulate what had been unregulated. They got their wish, but they also got more. And my uncle again, Rodney Avila, he

[Rodney Avila]

said to me, you don't want the Magnuson Act. And I kept saying, why? They're going to take my fish. And he said to me, there'll still be enough fish to support you. But once you let the government into your living room, it's like your mother in law coming to visit you. You never get them.

[Ian Koss]

Chicago, 2011. A cop is murdered. Police and prosecutors swear they have the trigger man. He swears he didn't do it. How far will each side go to prove their right? Like it's just one bombshell after another. You know, you're like, what? What? The story of a PlayStation, a brain eating amoeba, and the relentless pursuit of justice. Off duty. Out now. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. We're going to jump forward in time because I want you to see where all these changes are headed, why they matter, specifically to Carlos Rafael. It's 2015, almost 40 years after Magnuson became law, 40 years after new England fishermen cautiously welcomed the government into their world. Now the boom times are over. The fishing industry is struggling. A disaster is a disaster, and that's true whether we're talking about crops or whether we're talking about fish. The years leading up to 2015 had been brutal for New England fishermen. A dramatic 77% cut in the cod catch. The catch quotas set by the government kept getting lower and lower. That's going to be a heck of a number of people out on unemployment. The regulations kept getting tighter and tighter. Prospects are the bleakest they've ever been, that I'm going to be tied up for months. And that's the kind of draconian bureaucracy

[Gary Studds]

that fishermen are living with and struggling to maintain.

[Ian Koss]

For many fishermen, it meant the end of a career, the end of a way of life. We are the most regulated fishery in the world, and Carlos is tired of it all. He employs hundreds of people, manages dozens of boats. But his own daughter doesn't want to take over what he's built. So he decides to put the empire up for sale. In May of that year, Carlos got a phone call from a broker, someone who helped very wealthy clients manage their money. This broker had a pair of Russian businessmen in New York who had made an awful lot of money, something involving health care equipment. Now they're looking for a place to invest it. Carlos told the broker everything was up for grabs. The boats, the nets, the dredges, permits, property, a fish processing plant, the. The whole enchilada, as he put it.

[Carlos Rafael]

I gave him a silver platter, the whole enchilada.

[Ian Koss]

The price was $175 million. No problem, the broker said. Let's talk. Two weeks later, the Russians drove through the chain link gate and parked in front of the fish plant, a plain, blocky building made of corrugated metal, like a big shipping container with a sign on the side. Carlos Seafood. The Russians drove a BMW 5 Series, the sport version, with a V8 engine. They wore Louis Vuitton shoes and Versace belts, Pinky rings, Rolexes. Carlos was in his usual outfit of jeans and a worn out flannel, the breast pocket stuffed with slips of paper and of course, a pack of cigarettes. He did not look like a man worth $175 million. Carlos led the men through the plant and up a metal staircase to his office. The one filled with pictures of Scarface.

[Carlos Rafael]

This is Xavier.

[Ian Koss]

How you doing?

[Carlos Rafael]

That's the salesman.

[Rodney Avila]

How's it going?

[Carlos Rafael]

How are you? I'm Bob. Sergey. Hello.

[Ian Koss]

Hello.

[Carlos Rafael]

Meet you.

[Ian Koss]

The Russian buyers, however, are not buyers. Those are both names? Yes, but they are very curious about the business and they are recording everything. They're undercover feds.

[Carlos Rafael]

That motherfucker believe that shit.

[Ian Koss]

Like I'm picturing you in a white van with headphones on. There are white vans. Ron Mullet was the case agent with the irs.

[Ron Mullet]

But I don't recall if on that particular day white vans were involved. I was certainly somewhere where I could respond if things went sideways in there.

[Ian Koss]

So how did the IRS first get interested in Carlos Rafael?

[Ron Mullet]

They recognized that he was growing in a time where the industry was shrinking.

[Ian Koss]

Most boats sit idle, confined by federal rules that limit when they can fish and what they cash.

[Ron Mullet]

People were having a hard time meeting their loans on their boats. Yet he was succeeding. And he can step right up and has an abundance of cash to buy them out and buy their permits. Most importantly, that led to different theories from other law enforcement that he must be involved in some other illicit illegal activity. And it ran the gambit. Some agencies thought he was involved in human trafficking or smuggling. Some people thought it was drugs. People thought there was public corruption. Several different agencies had feelings that it was something, but none of them could figure out what it was.

[Ian Koss]

The irs, despite its reputation, does not just investigate tax fraud. As one agent put it to me, we do everything but crimes of passion, as long as there's money involved, will take it. That's why these other federal agencies wanted to brief Mullet on Carlos Rafael. There was obviously money involved here. It was just no one knew where it was coming from.

[Ron Mullet]

I listened to their brief, I thanked them for their time and I left and put the briefing sheet in my drawer, expecting never to look at it again.

[Ian Koss]

A few months later, Mullett heard from a source that Carlos was looking to cash out and figured maybe this was his chance to get a peek inside the fish plant. Mullet recruited a pair of undercover agents with Russian accents. Then a third agent to play the broker and Sent them in to buy Carlos seafood. Again, none of them knew what kind of business Carlos was really in. It could be drugs, it could be arms dealing. So they had no idea what the man was capable of. And it didn't help that the building was full of long sharp knives used to fillet fish. There was an uncertain moment early on when raphael noticed his three guests were all wearing the exact same 18 karat gold Rolex watch. But the leader of the group didn't miss a beat. Those are Christmas gifts for the boys, he said. Sir Ron Mullet was listening intently for any signs of trouble and also for any clues as to what Raphael's true business was like. You diversify, right? The men got to talking and Carlos was happy to talk about his business. This was his life.

[Carlos Rafael]

You like scallops, you said? Yeah, we got 12 of those 12 scallop boats, right.

[Ian Koss]

He talked about scalpers and draggers. He talked about the regulations he had to deal with, the sectors, the quotas, the permits, stuff the IRS agents didn't really understand.

[Carlos Rafael]

Yeah, that's the scope. I got to take this SC yellow.

[Ian Koss]

And more than anything, Carlos talked about the art of buying and selling fish. An obsession he has maintained since his days as a small time dealer.

[Carlos Rafael]

Hey, I told you 500 water. I told you 575. You buy the, then you got to set a pack and then you got, you gotta freeze the motherfuckers. Then you gotta master what the fuck do you want for me?

[Ian Koss]

But for the undercover agents who again were pretending they wanted to buy out the whole business, there was a mystery staring them in the face. That asking price of 175 million, as big as Carlos Seafood was, that number seemed like a lot. So the agents asked for some proof that this business was really worth what Carlos said it was worth.

[Ron Mullet]

And he within probably the first 10 or 15 minutes, he called his accountant.

[Carlos Rafael]

Why do you go to the office, get the financial statements? I think I'm done a lot just

[Ron Mullet]

to let him pick to send this stuff over, this financials and tax returns and stuff.

[Carlos Rafael]

All right, we doubt about it, so we'll take a right. She's going to the office. She said about 10, 15 minutes she'll be.

[Ron Mullet]

But early on it was. There's a part of the business that she doesn't know about and we're not going to talk about.

[Carlos Rafael]

About Carlos Seat Foods. Don't ask that question.

[Ian Koss]

What do you mean?

[Carlos Rafael]

Because she's gonna go through your la

[Ian Koss]

la la la la.

[Carlos Rafael]

Because she don't know nothing.

[Ian Koss]

That's What I meant we want to talk with you separately about it.

[Carlos Rafael]

Okay. Because. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ian Koss]

That's what we're talking about, Carlos. So the accountant is on her way over with the financials. She'll be there in 10 minutes. The plan had been to take a break and go down to the docks. But now everyone understands that there is a certain corner of the business that if it comes up, the accountant will cover her ears and go, la la la la la. That's what he means by that. So what to do? These buyers seem serious and they are clearly smart enough to know that the business on those official financial statements is not worth $175 million. Which means Carlos has a decision to make quickly.

[Carlos Rafael]

They coming back and they say the numbers doesn't justify 175 million. So stupid of me. I go in the bottom drop of

[Ian Koss]

this desk where they're sitting at right

[Ron Mullet]

now, and what he did is he

[Carlos Rafael]

opened a drawer and I got another set of books and he put it

[Ron Mullet]

on the desk right here.

[Carlos Rafael]

Tell me it's not worth $175 million.

[Ian Koss]

There you go. There he is.

[Carlos Rafael]

This is.

[Ian Koss]

Yeah, that's where we want to go. The la la la before she gets it.

[Carlos Rafael]

Yeah. This is a cowboy seafood. Okay.

[Ian Koss]

This set of books was labeled simply cash.

[Carlos Rafael]

This would have been another $600,000 at my bottom line.

[Ian Koss]

However, the lines of numbers on the ledger did not reveal a smuggling operation or a drug business. It was more fish, more prices, more lists of pounds and species. Because while other fishermen had been suffering and protesting under the system of regulations created by the Magnuson Act, Carlos Raphael had figured out a way to break the system entirely. To catch whatever he wanted to catch and get away with it for years. And this was not just about being a rebel and reeling in a few too many fish that he sold on the side. This was an operation. Carlos falsified official documents. He manipulated gas in the enforcement system. He built up a network for selling black market fish to high end restaurants involving a mafia associate, two corrupt cops, duffel bags full of cash and money hidden in offshore bank accounts, all adding up to millions of dollars worth of fish. The fishing was not a front, it was not a distraction. The fishing was the crime.

[Carlos Rafael]

You will not see it on paper.

[Gary Studds]

I lost.

[Carlos Rafael]

Yeah, that was.

[Ian Koss]

With the tension broken and all his cards on the table, Carlos joked with these men who he had only met that day, that he's really trusting them. At this point.

[Carlos Rafael]

I do not know. You could be the fucking irs any. This could be a fucking cluster. So I'm trusting you. We have the same affinity for IRS as you do. I'll regret that for the rest of my life. They son of a bitches. They would have never, never got me. But hey, it's over.

[Ian Koss]

This is a story about one man's choice to break the rules. But I see it as part of a much bigger story. Americans, we've always hated government regulation. That rebellious attitude Carlos has is not unique. It's part of the American dream, really, that desire to be autonomous, to work for yourself, to make your own luck, as Carlos put it. That culture has always been there, but the place we are in now somehow feels different. Today, the very idea of government regulation has become polarized. And I mean that on both sides of the political spectrum. It seems like people are instinctively for it or against it before they even know what it is like. As a matter of principle, people on the left are mostly focused on the benefits of regulation, how it can be a tool for justice, for safety, preservation. People on the right seem to be mostly focused on the harms and the costs, to the point that there is talk of dismantling the regulatory state entirely, shutting down whole agencies, stripping it down to nothing. Surely there is some nuance between these extremes. But the fact is, most of us don't want to look that close. It's boring, it's complicated. So we look away. Fishermen do not have the luxury of looking away. Nor for that matter, do truck drivers or small business owners or nurses, farmers, a lot of us. And I should be clear here that I am one of the lucky Americans who leads a pretty unregulated life. I make podcasts that go out on the Internet. I don't need a permit or a license. I can say whatever I want, including swears. I can make any number of episodes. Anyone can listen to them anywhere. It's a little hard for me to appreciate what it means to have your day to day work monitored by the state, to constantly bump up against rules that feel arbitrary. It's hard for me to appreciate the anger that someone like Carlos Rafael feels, but that anger is real and that is why I am telling this story. The details of the operation aside, could you talk a little bit more about your motivations, why it felt like these rules shouldn't be followed?

[Carlos Rafael]

It was not for the money. See, I'm the type of guy that I know the whole thing from the bottom up because I started as a loan and fishing boats. I know what it takes, what you need to raise a family and to get ahead in life. And they Forced me to do bullshit so I could keep all these people working.

[Ian Koss]

So you felt like you had to break the law in order to protect the people who worked for you?

[Carlos Rafael]

No questions asked. No questions asked. They forced you to do it? They forced me to cheat.

[Ian Koss]

They forced me to cheat. When I walked out of Carlos Seafood that first day, I was skeptical of what I just heard. It all felt pretty self serving. Of course, Carlos sees himself as the hero, the rogue fighting back against an overbearing state. On its own, he was easy to dismiss. But then again, I mean, we have

[Maria Tomasia]

to look at both sides of the story. Every calling has two sides.

[Ian Koss]

As I've talked with more people who fished out of New Bedford, who worked for Carlos and who knew him, the image I get is not simple. When you first met him, you'd say,

[Carlos Rafael]

oh, this guy's a mafiaso.

[Ian Koss]

But actually he had a heart in the fishing industry. Carlos Raphael remains a deeply divisive figure.

[Carlos Rafael]

If he wasn't born crooked, he must

[Ian Koss]

have learned it before he could talk. Someone who inspires jealousy, fury.

[Gary Studds]

Only Carlos turned into the biggest crook in America.

[Ian Koss]

America, Just Carlos. He is a product of his own moral depravity and someone who, despite all his crimes, all his deceptions, a lot of people continue to root for. Do you blame him for what he did? Do you think what he did is wrong? No, I don't. No, I don't. So who is Carlos Raphael really? A folk hero? A crook? A righteous rebel? A selfish con man? I believe in order to judge the crimes of Carlos, you also have to judge the whole system that he chose to break. So we're going to cover those 40 years, from the passage of Magnuson to the arrest of Carlos Raphael, to understand that system and the anger that grew up around it. And here is my hope for the series. If you are one of those people who instinctively thinks government regulation is good and necessary, this story will make you question that instinct. If you are someone who thinks regulation is flawed and burdensome and unnecessary, this story will make you question that instinct. And if you were someone who before today thought lobsters are red, then if nothing else, you are about to learn a whole lot about where your fish comes from.

[Gary Studds]

We've got riot gear, police lined up all down the street here, all the

[Ian Koss]

way past the gear in part two. What the government gives, the government can take away.

[Gary Studds]

People are being taken into custody left and right here. The last of the dealers are now out of the lot. Hit the pavement pretty fast.

[Ian Koss]

That's next time. If you want to hear the whole story of the rise and fall of Carlos Rafael Just search for Catching the Codfather wherever you are listening right now. The whole series is out so you can binge it right away. And if you do decide to join us, you'll also find that Catching the Codfather is just one of several seasons we've released. They're all in the same feed together, which we call the Big Dig. They're all about political drama of one kind or another, and if you enjoyed what you just heard, I bet you'll enjoy the rest again. Just search for Catching the Cod Father. Catching the Godfather is produced by Isabel Hibbard and myself, Ian Koss. It's edited by Lacey Roberts. The Editor Editorial Supervisor is Jennifer McKim with support from Ryan Alderman, and the Executive Producer is Devin Maverick Robbins. If you want to hear more stories like this one produced by the same team, I want to make sure you know this is the third season we have done together and if you want to hear the rest of them, just search for the Big Dig wherever you get your post Podcasts. I talked to a number of Gary Stud staffers for this episode, all of whom helped inform the story. They are John Sasso, Paul McCarthy, Steve Schwarden, Mike Forest, Tom McNaught and Mary Breslauer. Susan Dudley, who you will hear later in the series, also provided valuable insights for the episode. For the archival material, we owe a thanks to the M.L. barron Historic Archives, the New Bedford Fishing Heritage center, and the Portuguese American Archives at UMass Lowell and UMass Dartmouth. And a special thank you to Roberto and Giannuario Leo. You can find a video version of this episode on YouTube featuring incredible archival footage produced by Joni Tobin and Annie Gerzen. The artwork is by Bill Miller. Our closing song is Viva Viva New Bedford by Georges Ferreira. The Big Dig is a production of GBH News and distributed by prx. For more cbc podcasts, go to cbc ca podcasts.