IanThe Biggest and Weirdest Undercover Operations
November 29th 2010 10:10
As seen on Brainz.org, 15 of the Biggest and Weirdest Undercover Operations of all time!
Some undercover operations are twisted and kind of sad, requiring law enforcement to bend the rules of conduct and blur the line between cop and criminal. Some are triumphant, bringing down the big bad crime boss through years of meticulous work and sacrifice. Then there are some like the case of former DC mayor Marion Barry, which border on candid-camera hilarious. Well, you know -- if they didn’t involve an elected official who ran the seat of American power for a couple of decades, that is.
Barry was a prominent politician and civil rights icon for most of his career. But like so many other, once pure and idealistic politicians, he eventually came under investigation from the FBI and DC police in the early 90s. They managed to flip his girlfriend into an informant, and eventually caught him on camera smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room. Afterward Barry was livid, and ended up muttering the immortal quote “Bitch set me up”, which we all can only wish were uttered in an age when the internet existed.
If you buy in to the missing white woman hysteria, you’re most certainly familiar with Joran van der Sloot, the chief suspect in the disappearance of Natalie Holloway. Van der Sloot, aside from having a name that sounds like a euphemism or something out of a German snuff film, was the last person seen with Holloway at an Aruban bar in 2005. He denied any knowledge of her disappearance and was eventually released...only to return after a media storm and several attempts to pin the crime on him.
Van der Slot claimed that for several thousand dollars, he would show the family the location of Natalie’s hidden body and tell them exactly what happened to her. Like any intelligent person in that scenario, the Holloways called the police, who caught van der Sloot on tape essentially committing fraud since, in a somewhat sick twist, the location he showed the Holloways ended up not containing Natalie’s body. Prosecutors let van der Sloot walk and instead trailed him for months, at the conclusion of which he promptly murdered another young woman in almost exactly the same fashion as he was suspected of having killed Natalie Holloway. The undercover operation was deemed “successful” in the sense that van der Sloot was finally put away for life. But that’s like saying it’s “successful” to get back at your ex-girlfriend by killing yourself.
As it turns out, catching random animals and selling them as pets is kind of illegal. And while cops have yet to bust down little Timmy’s door and arrest him for that garter snake he caught in the yard, apparently the illicit animal trade is a large underground business. For whatever baffling reason, some people catch hundreds of deer, alligators, beavers, you-name-it and for an equally baffling reason some people are willing to pay top dollar for these wild animals.
Well not in the state of Mississippi, no sir. The state spent several months and presumably several hundreds of thousands of dollars infiltrating this dangerous underbelly of the criminal world to obtain convictions on 15 of the worst kind of Bambi’s-mom-killing criminals. What heinous acts were these Corleones of Cougars, these Scarfaces of Squirrels, these Tarantinos of Turkeys perpetrating other than torturing puns? Well as Curtis Green, director of law enforcement for the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, put it "They were legally killing beaver here, where tails are worth about $5 but were turning them in in Arkansas, claiming they were killed there, and collecting a $10 bounty." Truly justice was served.
Marion Barry
Barry was a prominent politician and civil rights icon for most of his career. But like so many other, once pure and idealistic politicians, he eventually came under investigation from the FBI and DC police in the early 90s. They managed to flip his girlfriend into an informant, and eventually caught him on camera smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room. Afterward Barry was livid, and ended up muttering the immortal quote “Bitch set me up”, which we all can only wish were uttered in an age when the internet existed.
Joran Van Der Sloot
Van der Slot claimed that for several thousand dollars, he would show the family the location of Natalie’s hidden body and tell them exactly what happened to her. Like any intelligent person in that scenario, the Holloways called the police, who caught van der Sloot on tape essentially committing fraud since, in a somewhat sick twist, the location he showed the Holloways ended up not containing Natalie’s body. Prosecutors let van der Sloot walk and instead trailed him for months, at the conclusion of which he promptly murdered another young woman in almost exactly the same fashion as he was suspected of having killed Natalie Holloway. The undercover operation was deemed “successful” in the sense that van der Sloot was finally put away for life. But that’s like saying it’s “successful” to get back at your ex-girlfriend by killing yourself.
The Wildlife Trafficking Ring
Well not in the state of Mississippi, no sir. The state spent several months and presumably several hundreds of thousands of dollars infiltrating this dangerous underbelly of the criminal world to obtain convictions on 15 of the worst kind of Bambi’s-mom-killing criminals. What heinous acts were these Corleones of Cougars, these Scarfaces of Squirrels, these Tarantinos of Turkeys perpetrating other than torturing puns? Well as Curtis Green, director of law enforcement for the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, put it "They were legally killing beaver here, where tails are worth about $5 but were turning them in in Arkansas, claiming they were killed there, and collecting a $10 bounty." Truly justice was served.
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