Rufus Traps Trappers by Going Undercover : Sting: Department of Fish and Game uses wardens to apprehend traders who deal in illegal pelts and parts, violate license laws.

As the two undercover game wardens talked with the owner of a taxidermy shop in a small Northern California town, they froze. In walked the local, uniformed warden--the last person they wanted to see.

The first two wardens--a man and a woman--were pretending to be fur buyers. They suspected the taxidermist was dealing in illegal pelts.

The undercover male warden knew the local warden, who also was friendly with the taxidermist. Their sons played on the same soccer team. They talked awhile, and the taxidermist introduced the local warden to the strangers. It was a tense moment but no recognition. The male undercover warden was glad he had grown a beard.

A year later the incident could be recalled with amusement as an anecdote from the California Department of Fish and Game’s 18-month sting operation against illegal trappers of fur-bearing creatures and the subsequent selling of their pelts.

The DFG called it “Operation Rufus.” The scientific name for a bobcat--the principal prey--is Felis rufus .

By chance, the operation spilled over into the illegal selling of bear parts and resulted this week in the filing of 48 misdemeanor and six felony charges against 21 defendants in Shasta, Modoc, Humboldt and Orange counties. The felonies were for buying bear parts.

The maximum penalties for the felonies are a $5,000 fine and a year in jail, for the misdemeanors a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.

The wardens were part of the Wildlife Protection Division’s special operations unit for undercover work. Their identities remain secret. Call them Trapper Cal and Lonesome Dove.

Greg Laret, deputy chief of the DFG’s Wildlife Protection Division in Sacramento, said: “There was a rumor going around that there were game wardens up in the area that were buying animal parts and would come back a year later and arrest you.”

One day Cal got a phone call from a suspect.

“Who are you and where is your shop?” the suspect demanded to know.

The agent’s replies must have been satisfactory, because the suspect never followed up.

“But as long as that word was out, they also were making not very veiled threats against him,” Laret said.

One man told Cal if they found a game warden working undercover, “We’d leave him layin’ in the woods.”

In another instance Cal was talking casually with a man whose acquaintance had just been arrested.

The man told Cal, “If anybody ever did that to me, I’d kill him.”

During Operation Rufus, Cal and Dove bought the pelts of 160 bobcats, 171 raccoons, 94 foxes, five river otters and five coyotes; the hides of six deer and one bear, and the skins of eight gray squirrels, 20 muskrats and one each of an opossum, badger, and ring-tailed cat, along with the skins of seven domestic rabbits and four domestic cats.

Among all the furs bought, 27% were sold illegally. The value of all the items bought and sold, including bear parts, totaled $23,000.

Laret said: “We ended up buying both legal and illegal furs. If you go up to a guy and he’s got 25 bobcats to sell you and half of ‘em have been tagged (as legally trapped), you just can’t ask to buy the untagged ones. It wouldn’t look right, so we ended up buying a lot of legal stuff.”

But even the legal merchandise was useful.

“We sold that to (Theodore Bizakis of Orange), and he wasn’t licensed (as a fur dealer),” Laret said.

The operation was conceived, Laret said, because “we’d had lots of reports, particularly out of the Modoc and Shasta county areas, that people were taking bobcats and foxes without regard to the season, without licensing, without tagging them, and also taking other protected species as well.

“(The wardens) started nosing around the community a little. We weren’t certain how difficult it would be to get in, but an example of how easy it was to find people was that in one location our agent had met one of our suspects (who) had gone off to get some fur to bring back. Our man was just waiting there when another individual showed up that he did not know, and the second fellow offered to sell him 30 fox pelts--but emphasized that it would have to be strictly cash, and he could not refer to his trapping license number.”

Good bobcat pelts bring from $100 to $175, fox pelts less.

“The main part was buying pelts from trappers and other people who were not licensed as trappers,” Laret said. “But once we got up there we also were contacted by a couple of individuals from the San Francisco area who were looking to buy bear parts. They were up there soliciting.”

Bear parts--particularly gall bladders--are prized in some Asian cultures as aphrodisiacs.

Laret said: “We did a sting operation a couple of years ago called Operation Ursus (Ursus americanus is the scientific name for the black bear) where we bought a lot of bear parts in the Bay and L.A. areas. We found that 90% of all the dried gall bladders that were being sold as bear were in fact from pigs and cows. They would just go to the slaughter houses and pick them up and dry them. So far as we know, there is no way to tell the difference except by running laboratory tests.

“The upshot was that when we were in this operation selling gall bladders, (the suspects) required us to have the bear paws so there would be evidence that they were in fact taken from a bear.”

But after they had made a few sales, the wardens realized they could use the same paws over and over.

“They were using paws to authenticate the galls, selling the galls and keeping the paws, and using the same paws to authenticate more galls,” Laret said.

The charges include three felony counts each against Yongsoo Kang and Hongsoo Sin of San Francisco for purchasing bear parts--57 gall bladders and 51 paws, all gleaned from the DFG’s store of old evidence or from bears previously dispatched as road kills or on depredation permits.

According to the wardens, Kang and Sin would drive to the Burney area to make the transactions.

“They seemed to be having a really good time,” Laret said. “We had other agents tail them as they left the area, and in each case they were laughing and slapping each other on the back and talking as though they had really pulled one over on us.

“In another case, Kang was about to pay our agent for the bear parts and got into the car so he could count the money. Our warden said, ‘What are you doing, getting into the car?’ and the guy said, ‘I feel like a drug dealer.’ ”

For Cal and Dove, there were other dangers.

One night they were having dinner in a restaurant in Burney when one of their suspects walked in.

“Hey, I’ve got some items for you,’ he said. “I’ll be glad to meet you.”

He led them out of town on a dark road, headlights out. The agents were a little nervous, but it turned out that the suspect was, indeed, just had bobcat pelts to sell.

DEFENDANTS CHARGED IN DFG’s OPERATION RUFUS

ORANGE COUNTY

--Theodore Bizakis, Orange, buying raw furs without a fur dealer’s license.

SHASTA COUNTY

--Victor Green, Johnson Park, sale of raw furs without a trapping license and sale of untagged bobcat pelt.

--Yongsoo Kang, San Francisco, three felony counts of purchasing bear parts.

--Ruben L. Rohrbach, Burney, sale of raw fur without a trapping license and sale of untagged bobcat pelts.

--Hongsoo Sin, San Francisco, three felony counts of purchasing bear parts.

MODOC COUNTY

--Frank Randall Bethel, Alturas, transfer of license to another person.

--Neta Kay Ellenberger, Adin, transfer of license to another person.

--Max Kerwin Forrest, Alturas, use of another’s license and sale of raw furs without a trapping license.

--Nolan Leeroy Holloway, Alturas, sale of untagged bobcat pelts, possession of unlawfully taken wildlife and two counts of selling raw furs without a trapping license.

--Jim Onieal Sherer, Canby, using another’s license and sale of raw fur without a trapping license.

--Ronald Lee Sherer, Canby, sale of raw furs without a trapping license and sale of untagged bobcat pelts.

--Dallas Michael Snider, Adin, using another’s license, sale of raw furs without a trap license, sale of untagged bobcat pelt.

HUMBOLDT COUNTY

--Thomas Dale Bigger, Blocksburg, sale of raw furs without a trapping license and sale of untagged bobcat pelts.

--Darren F. Brown, Redway, possession of unlawfully taken wildlife, possession of fully protected mammal, possession of non-game bird, two counts of sale of raw furs without a trapping license, unlawful take of river otter and sale of untagged bobcat pelts.

--Unnamed juvenile, two counts of sale of raw furs without a trapping license, two counts of sale of untagged bobcat pelts, sale of bear parts, transfer of license to another person, possession of unlawfully taken wildlife and sale of sport-taken game.

--Armand D. Earley, Alderpoint, sale of untagged bobcat pelts.

--George E. Humphrey, Alderpoint, sale of raw furs without a trapping license.

--Unnamed juvenile, sale of raw furs without a trapping license and sale of untagged bobcat pelts.

--Sam J. Humphrey, Alderpoint, using another’s license and sale of raw furs without a trapping license.

--Clarence R. Huls, Ferndale, sale of untagged bobcat pelts.

--Randall J. Jurrens, Redway, possession of unlawfully taken wildlife, sale of sport-taken game, sale of raw furs without a license and sale of untagged bobcat pelts.

NOTE: All charges are misdemeanors, unless noted otherwise.