ADRIAN MA, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Adrian Ma. It sounds like the setup for a classic mobster movie - man starts criminal enterprise, trafficks in illegal contraband and makes millions and runs afoul of the feds. But the story we're going to talk about next is 100% true, and the contraband in question isn't drugs or guns. It's actually fish.
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CARLOS RAFAEL: One day out of nowhere, he comes out in the middle of the ocean and he says, we're going to have to start calling him the Codfather.
MA: That's right. The Codfather, as in cod fish. That's the subject of a new six-part podcast from Boston member station, GBH, called Catching The Codfather. In it, reporter Ian Coss examines the rise and fall of this local legend who still insists to this day that he did nothing wrong. Ian joins us now to tell us more. Ian, thanks for being here.
IAN COSS, BYLINE: Thanks for having me.
MA: Start off by telling us who exactly is the Codfather, and how did he come to own one of the biggest fishing businesses in America?
COSS: Yeah, so the Codfather, as he's known, is a man named Carlos Rafael. Carlos immigrated to New Bedford, Massachusetts, from the Azores, this tiny string of Portuguese islands out in the Atlantic. He came to the U.S. with nothing really as a teenager. He started working as a fish cutter down by the docks and really built an empire from scratch - started bidding on fish at the auction, started buying boats, buying a processing plant. And he was just this extremely cunning, extremely scrappy businessman who also built this kind of mystique around him of always being kind of on the edge of what was legal. And that is, I think, where the nickname of the Codfather really got started.
MA: Oh, OK. So what was it that he was supposedly doing wrong? Like, how did he run afoul of the feds?
COSS: What ultimately becomes the centerpiece of his case that we cover in the series is this scheme that he called painting fish. He was not literally painting fish with a brush.
MA: OK.
COSS: What he was doing is kind of fudging paperwork so that the government thought he was catching one species of fish, but he was actually catching a different species of fish. The government regulates how much fish you can catch, right? And so when Carlos' business was really at its peak, there were a number of fish populations that were really in trouble, where the science was saying these stocks are not healthy, and we need to cut back. And Carlos found a way to go after those species anyway to sell them, and nobody knew it.
MA: OK, so Carlos is doing this scheme. He's painting the fish. How, eventually, does it get caught?
COSS: Yeah, so in 2015, he decides that he wants to cash out. So he put his business up for sale, and it just so happened that this pair of Russian businessmen showed up to buy Carlos Seafood. They came to his office, and Carlos says to them, you know, it's all for sale, yours for the taking for the simple asking price of $175 million. And so these two Russian buyers are a little skeptical. They start asking, you know, prove it to us that this business is worth what you're saying it's worth. Carlos kind of has this moment where he realizes, in order to sell the business, he's going to have to reveal how the business works.
So in a leap of faith, he reaches down into the bottom drawer of his desk, and he pulls out this ledger that just says cash. That is really the entry point to this whole underside of the business that involves forged paperwork, tax evasion and fraud and all these other things. What Carlos does not realize, of course, is that those two Russian businessmen are not businessmen. They are undercover IRS agents.
MA: In the show, it seems like Carlos is not exactly sorry about this. And you asked him at one point, like, why did he break these regulations? And this is what he said.
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RAFAEL: I know what it takes to raise a family and to get ahead in life, and they forced me to do [expletive] so I could keep all these people working.
COSS: I mean, that's really the thing that drew me into this story, was trying to understand his motivations. Because, you know, as you hear in that clip, Carlos feels that the government and the regulation has destroyed an industry, destroyed a way of life, and that he did what he had to do to survive and to protect his people. As I went around town in New Bedford and I talked to other people in the fishing industry, some other people even in government around town, you would hear echoes of that same argument, you know, and sometimes outright sympathy. You know, there are some fishermen who I'd ask, do you think what Carlos did is wrong? And they would say no. And I should be clear. There are some people who hate his guts...
MA: (Laughter) OK.
COSS: ...Who feel like he robbed the ocean. He robbed this common resource. He defied the rules. And there are other people who do see him as a kind of folk hero. You get the full range.
MA: So, Ian, you mentioned your interest earlier in this story. But why do you think it matters beyond this one port or even this one industry? Like, why do you think other people would care about it outside of Massachusetts?
COSS: Yeah. To put it in a word that runs the risk of sounding really dry and boring, the word is regulation.
MA: (Laughter).
COSS: Whatever your kind of predispositions are, whether you're a libertarian or whether you're a big government conservationist or whatever you are, there's something in this story that will kind of challenge your thinking a little bit because it's not a black-and-white story, in my opinion, about heroes and villains. You want to root for the environmental regulators who are out there trying to save the fish. You also want to root for the independent fishermen trying to make a living and carry on a family tradition. And so I think this story forces you to reckon with the complexity of what regulation - broadly put - what that means when it actually touches people's lives.
MA: Well, Ian, I think hopefully you've hooked some new listeners to your podcast from this conversation. See what I did there? Ha, ha, ha.
COSS: The fishing puns are unavoidable, my friend.
MA: (Laughter) We've been talking with Ian Coss, the host of the new GBH podcast Catching The Codfather. Ian, thanks so much.
COSS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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