Louis Ferrante, former mob wise guy, called about a documentary

My email to Louis:  Nice speaking with you today.  Here are few items that may be of interest in fleshing out your show ideas.  It is a show that needs to be done, but hasn't because the bad guys are a pretty close knit group and it's hard to infiltrate their facilities.  Even volunteers and interns who manage to get in are usually kept in the dark about what really happens to the animals, where they come from and where they go.

 

I keep a website of the people who have come up on my radar for breeding, buying, selling and exploiting big cats.  It is a who's who list of places that would be great to try and get inside so that you could expose them.  The list is at http://www.911AnimalAbuse.com

 

Mario Tabraue is one of the ones that I think is most likely to be back at his old tricks of smuggling wildlife and drugs, but I have no way to prove it.  He is fighting our federal bill to ban his activities.  The bad guys always try to scare me off by saying they know him and that they can have him make me disappear.  This is one of the best articles about him and is recent:  http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/mario-tabraue-cocaine-kingpin-lobbying-congress-big-cats

 

It sounds like your show is more broad than my scope of information, since all I track or deal with are exotic cats.  I don't know if there is a key element to other issues, but there is with the big cats.  It is all about cub handling.

 

People like Mario Tabraue of ZWF, or Kathy Stearns of Dade City's Wild Things, or Bhagavan Antle of T.I.G.E.R.S., or Joe Exotic Schreibvogel of GW Zoo, or a dozen others like them, claim they can make $25,000 a weekend charging people to pet lion, tiger and liger cubs.  The booking agent for Mario told me they book a million dollars a year in such tours for him.  The thing is that cubs are only allowed to be used, by USDA guidelines, between the ages of 8 and 12 weeks, so every month they need to breed more litters.

 

There are only 300 or so tigers in legitimate, AZA accredited zoos in the U.S.  The other 5,000 - 10,000 are in private hands, roadside zoos, and non accredited USDA licensed facilities.  It only costs $40 and a one page application for a USDA license, so it doesn't mean anything.

 

Where are the hundreds of cubs going each year?  The black market is the only potential market for them; yet it has been very hard to prove.  More about the whole cub petting industry here:  http://bigcatrescue.org/abuse-issues/issues/pet-cubs/

 

Here is a map of big cat owners:  http://bigcatrescue.org/map-of-big-cat-owners/

 

Lots to talk about.

 

12/8/14 to me:  This info is incredibly helpful (though heart wrenching). I will explore these links. And these are the sort of tips I would pass on to my fixers, very good leads. Just finished watching you on Temple Tigers segment with Jane Valez-Mitchell. Another tragedy. Feel free to pass along whatever else can help and I look forward to seeing you Friday

 

12/11/14 I wrote Lou:  Dear Lou,  See you tomorrow morning at 10 at Big Cat Rescue  12802 Easy St Tampa, FL 33625.  Good news today that Mexico banned the use of wild animals in circuses and banned exhibits of dolphins and whales.  Hard to imagine why the U.S. is so far behind when it comes to protecting wild animals.  To date 36 countries, 46 U.S. cities, and 28 jurisdictions in Canada have banned the use of big cats in circus acts. -Carole

 

Lou wrote Carole:  Hey Carole. Yes, we're on. And I know, we're so outta date. The EU would never even execute someone and we do it everyday, how can they care about animals. But I plan to make a hit show and open up the discussion more. Keep sending info like this. See you tomorrow.  Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T