by Craig Welch
Everyone understood the house rules. If the cops arrived, they were supposed to just dump the stash and run, and not slow down or stop unless someone pulled a gun. If someone was working down below, the crew members would use a knife and slice the line to his water jet, the stinger. That way they could say they merely had a diver down exploring. Clams would remain stacked on the side of the boat where they could easily be jettisoned in a pinch.
The Typhoon did most of the hard labor, but workers sometimes towed a small skiff or a Boston whaler to transport the geoduck to a nearby marina. That way The Typhoon could dock at Fox Island empty. The operation had been going on so long and went so smoothly that Tobin often didn’t bother going out anymore himself.
The crab operation was easy but less lucrative, Smith explained, usually netting each worker three hundred dollars or less a night. Most crabbers tied their pots to buoys so anyone floating by could tell what rested below. The Typhoon’s crew was more devious. The men strung pots together with a cable called a ground line and dropped everything to the seafloor. The crew would take a GPS reading and return to the same spot days later with a grappling hook. They would snare the ground line and retrieve the pots. On crab nights, Smith baited, lowered, and retrieved the gear. Except for the very moment they pulled the pots aboard, no one would ever know what they were doing.
Tobin had found the crab mother lode at the Nisqually Reach by hiring an aging poacher who had fished there in the 1970s. This gentleman’s sole job on The Typhoon was employing his vast knowledge of the south Sound to locate deepwater stores of monster crab. The crabs he found were, in fact, huge—about 30 percent larger than most in Puget Sound. They had gotten that way because commercial crabbing had been banned in that spot for decades. Tobin worked several hundred crab pots at one time, most in waters more than 150 feet deep. The crew collected fifteen hundred pounds every three days. Smith said he’d helped Tobin collect those crabs at least two hundred times in about three years. He estimated he’d poached geoduck 150 times.
Jarmon did some back-of-the-napkin arithmetic. If his math was right, Doug Tobin had taken hundreds of thousands of pounds of geoduck and clam. That would make the informant the biggest wildlife thief they had encountered in two decades. Even if he’d only poached since meeting Smith, the detective figured their informant had made off with $3 million in stolen shellfish. And Tobin had learned his tricks working with cops.
Jarmon dialed Detective Volz.
“I wish I could say that I was more surprised,” Volz said.
The magnitude of what Tobin had done sunk in slowly. He’d worked his fishing connections to generate on-the-money tips. When he fed that information to authorities he must have felt reasonably sure they weren’t watching him. The more he pointed to everyone else, the less likely it would be that cops even gave him any thought. Whether by luck or design, Tobin had also helped the cops clear away his chief competitors. When DeCourville went to prison, Tobin began selling to his customers. Getting rid of Ken Li probably helped him, too.
But Tobin’s brazenness fueled new tips. Several weeks later, Detective Jarmon got wind of an unusual telephone call from a community college English instructor on the Key Peninsula. The instructor lived within view of Wyckoff Shoal and complained about seeing a boat anchored in rough weather without lights at night. When he looked in the morning, the boat would be gone. Intrigued, this instructor began paying closer attention. At night, he watched out his bedroom window. Sometimes when he saw the boat, a flashlight on deck would flip on briefly. Then just as quickly the light would blink out. He knew boating at night without lights violated Coast Guard rules. He presumed that meant someone was trying hard not to be seen. He saw shadows in moonlight of men wandering around the deck.
He started writing what he saw on three-by-five note cards. More than a dozen times in six months he recorded his observations. One night the boat turned so the cabin faced his home. The instructor could see faint yellow and orange light slivers leaking around cabin window rims. Someone had covered the panes with construction paper or dark curtains. One morning he rose before the sun and heard the motor cough; he watched through predawn light as the boat took off. At a friend’s suggestion, the instructor called wildlife officers. Jarmon convinced him to mail in his notes.
The detectives knew catching Tobin would require extraordinary measures. The detectives couldn’t follow him by boat. As tribal police had found out, The Typhoon was fast and well equipped. A patrol boat probably couldn’t get close. The only option would be to tail the boat from land. But at least now they had eyes and ears inside. The detectives had asked Heidi Mills and Keith Smith to remain in touch with Tobin. Smith in particular steadily fed Jarmon information. The detectives now stood a chance of at least learning when The Typhoon was going out. They might even find out where it was heading.
Several times through late October and early November, Jarmon, Volz, and another detective named Charlie Pudwill slipped out after dark when they heard The Typhoon might be out. Sometimes the detectives arrived after The Typhoon left its moorage. A few times they set up video cameras in the bushes outside the marina, waiting to record what happened on the boat’s return. The detectives spent the entire night of October 25 camped in their truck among the weeds. When the boat returned at dawn, the crew stepped off but carried nothing. Five nights later, through high winds and heavy rain, the detectives watched several men wander around the deck of The Typhoon. They waited for five hours, but the boat never left the dock. Night after night, surveillance continued with little change. At dawn, the video camera would catch several men and women walking off the boat without contraband. Rarely was Doug Tobin even among them.
On November 13, their luck turned. Just after midnight the detectives trailed the boat from a shaded bluff and chased it on foot during its journey through Drayton Passage until it finally disappeared around Devil’s Head point. Moments before Volz and Jarmon had decided to give up, Volz had seen the boat jet back. Then Detective Pudwill called from his station near Wyckoff Shoal. The Typhoon was back, idling across the channel. Volz and Jarmon were inside Jarmon’s Expedition, bloody from scraping through blackberry brambles and damp from wandering the beach in the rain. They were exhausted but agreed to meet Pudwill. If Tobin’s crew was ready to work, then so were they.
chapter eleven
THE HUNT, REDUX
November 13, 2001
From a pea-gravel beach a few minutes later, the three detectives watched the boat sputter around the channel, then cut its engines and lights. The men could see its dim outline across the channel through the predawn haze. In the distance, they could hear the air compressor throb and whir. It was after 3 A.M., and the detectives had been working since the previous morning. Now another diver had finally been sent below. It appeared their night wasn’t over after all.
For an hour and a half, the detectives kept the boat in view. Pudwill propped his spyglass on a tripod, and Volz told him to lock the scope in position and not move it, even if the boat peeled away. Later, they would need to know precisely where the boat had idled. Volz and Jarmon hiked back to the Ford Expedition. They would return to the dock on Fox Island, pull in behind the bushes, and try to catch the crew unloading. Later they’d take a boat back to Wyckoff Shoal and, using video of the seafloor, see if they could prove how much the crew had taken. They hoped, just once, to see Doug Tobin’s face.
Morning light filled the sky by the time Volz and Jarmon crossed the bridge onto Fox Island. The Typhoon was already moored at the dock where the crew was offloading the evening’s take. A man and a woman with a blond ponytail lugged milk crates from the boat. They stacked the containers in a parking lot, where another man used a hand dolly to cart them to a van. From the bushes, the detectives saw wet geoducks piled end to end in the crates. They watched the crew carry off The Typhoon’s gear. The woman and four men quickly cleaned up, moved equipment to three cars, and said their good-byes. The detectives sat until the vehicles drov
e off. Where the hell was The Typhoon’s skipper?
Volz and Jarmon could have jumped out like drug cops hassling street-corner dealers. They could have arrested those coming off the boat. But a single night of geoduck poaching would only land the poachers a puny theft charge. Most likely they would wind up with a small fine or probation, and Tobin would just change tactics and keep going.
There was little to do but press on. Volz called biologist and shellfish diving expert Don Rothaus. They agreed to meet in three hours at another marina on the peninsula. It would take Rothaus and his crew that long to prepare the agency’s boat, which gave Volz and Jarmon enough time to catch a catnap. Jarmon pulled the SUV over, and the two men settled in for some shut-eye. It would be their first in more than twenty-four hours.
Later that morning the research vessel Clamdestine sliced through icy waters toward Drayton Passage. The day was overcast, but visibility was good. Rothaus had piloted the boat for fifteen years conducting underwater surveys of Puget Sound’s abalone, sea cucumbers, urchins, scallops, and geoducks. The twenty-eight-footer was a thick-hulled fiberglass boat and had been constructed to take body blows. It had been bounced off rocky outcroppings and slammed by fifteen-foot waves. The large working deck was roomy, ideal for ferrying guests. Volz and Jarmon stayed outside in the chill to keep awake. They had worked intermittently with Rothaus for years. They didn’t go into detail about what they were doing. They told him only that they wanted any evidence of digging on the bottom. Rothaus mostly used the boat for research. Only occasionally did he get to use it for law enforcement, and the chance to take part in the investigation clearly animated the biologist. He was talkative and pointed out the irony: a boat named Clamdestine taking part in espionage work involving clams. Rothaus asked if he needed a code name, and the detectives jokingly called him “The Weasel.” Rothaus didn’t seem to mind.
Rothaus maneuvered the boat until he heard from Pudwill that the Clamdestine filled his scope. Pudwill had shivered onshore with no food, coffee, or breaks for nearly ten hours. They dropped anchor where Rothaus and another biologist planned to dive and sweep a video camera across the seafloor. Only if Rothaus could prove clams were missing from the channel and had been removed recently could detectives argue that the crates of geoducks offloaded from The Typhoon came from that spot and nowhere else. At 11:20 A.M., Rothaus and fellow diver Michael Ulrich slid into the water with oxygen cylinders on their backs and carrying underwater lights. They settled to the bottom thirty-one feet below. Fifty minutes later they emerged and Rothaus grinned. He and Ulrich climbed into the boat. Volz asked to watch the recording right away.
The detectives hovered around the portable display screen. Down below, the divers had both headed west, Rothaus holding the camera. Within minutes, the detectives saw what Rothaus now described as a long row of dig holes in the muck from which divers had yanked clams. Rothaus had filmed through the green water as Ulrich probed the compact surface around a depression in the sand, showing how solid the floor was. Then Ulrich stuck a probe in the depression until it sunk sixteen inches—something clearly had been removed. He moved a few feet and found another hole two feet deep.
For twenty-five minutes, Volz and Jarmon watched row after row of these divots appear on the tape. Given the currents, loose sand would have compacted after only a few tidal cycles; the presence of the holes meant they were fresh. The two divers also showed them furrows in the sand created by the drag of a fisherman’s air and water hose; those furrows would also not last the passing of a few tides. Furthermore, hundreds of varieties of thin white tubeworms usually live among the sand below the surface. As divers pluck geoducks from the muck, these worms get kicked from the mud and land on the seafloor, a telltale sign of clam harvests. Rothaus pointed out that worms now littered the surface. He pointed to discolored and discarded geoduck shells sitting on the ocean floor being nibbled on by purple-legged crab, starry flounder, and flatfish.
For the first time, Volz and Jarmon had proof The Typhoon had stolen several thousand dollars’ worth of clams. The detectives had documented every step of the operation, from the shore to the water to the seafloor and back to shore. The biologist was beaming, proud of his own role. But Volz couldn’t bring himself to return the smile.
Rothaus pulled the anchor and fired up the Clamdestine. Volz and Jarmon stayed in the cabin. Along with Pudwill, the detectives had spent more than a hundred hours apiece in the last two weeks tracking The Typhoon. It was now sixteen months since Jarmon had seen Tobin’s boat from his living room. They had finally witnessed men and women stealing clams, perhaps as much as two thousand pounds’ worth in one night. But they still lacked what they wanted most.
To build a case against the region’s most prolific wildlife smuggler in nearly twenty years, they had to directly tie him to the crimes. If they wanted to charge him with conspiracy, racketeering, felony theft—real crimes—they had to make the case airtight. They had to do more than link The Typhoon and its crew. If they were to shut Tobin down for good, they had to actually catch him in the act, and more than once. Yet despite everything they’d seen through a long, exhausting night, the skipper of The Typhoon had been nowhere in sight.
The detectives regrouped. After a few days to catch up on sleep, they decided to expand the investigation’s scope. If Tobin no longer drove the boat himself, they would have to tie him in some other way. So far, they could prove a boat registered to Tobin took geoducks at night and that employees on his payroll drove off with stolen shellfish in his van. Getting him on videotape demonstrating knowledge of those events could seal his fate. They needed to be able to make it clear to a jury where Tobin fit in.
Less than a week after their epic all-night chase, the same three cops conducted all-night surveillance one more time. This time, they followed the geoduck-filled van to Fife, where it pulled into Tobin’s seafood plant. Two nights later, they followed his crew again. Detectives Volz and Jarmon even tailed the buyer who took the load to the airport. Outside Alaska Airlines’ cargo docks on November 21, they watched the delivery man unload white cardboard boxes. The detectives went to the office and collected copies of the shipping documents and the bill.
They were still at Sea-Tac when Jarmon’s phone rang just after noon. Pudwill was calling from his perch outside Tobin’s processing plant. He’d been kneeling at the window in an unmarked, state-owned motor home, shooting undercover footage with an eight-millimeter camera. Through the blinds and over a fence cloaked in blackberry brambles, he’d watched one van unload and another pack up for the airport. No one shut the garage bay doors, so Pudwill just kept filming. He saw people spraying down empty geoduck crates and cleaning up from a night of work. Finally, around lunchtime, Doug Tobin wandered outside wearing a thick North Face jacket. He handed a wad of cash to one of his workers and said something that made the others laugh. Then, for a brief moment, he looked around, a merry fish king surveying his empire. For perhaps fifteen seconds, Tobin stared off toward Pudwill. Pudwill didn’t know what he was doing but knew better than to worry that he’d been made. He’d chosen his position carefully and trusted his instincts. There was no way Tobin could know he was being watched. As quickly as he’d turned, Tobin looked away. Pudwill called Jarmon to say he’d finally gotten the money shot: Doug Tobin had been present and in charge during the commission of several crimes.
A few days later Tobin paged Kevin Harrington. The informant chatted for a while, then asked when he’d be reimbursed for the geoducks he’d lost during the Ken Li sting. Harrington promised to check into it. The men talked a bit longer. Tobin said he had heard that Harrington was looking at Brian Hodgson and his partner. Tobin said he could help them bring down the partner. He told Harrington he also had information about a cheating geoduck company in Canada—the business he’d worked with for five years, the one owned by Julian Ng and Jeff Albulet. He could deliver it “on a silver platter.”
Finally Tobin got to his real point. One of his crew members had hea
rd that fish cops were snooping around The Typhoon: What was that about?
Harrington said he didn’t know.
Tobin said it took place when the boat was moored off Fox Island. What were Harrington and Volz doing?
Harrington stayed vague, and they agreed to get coffee the following week.
Five days later, Tobin called Volz after not speaking to him for nearly six months. Volz heard something different in his voice. Fear? Tobin asked Volz what he was working on, but Volz was elliptical. Again, Tobin volunteered to give up the Canadians and said there was more poaching going on than ever.
“But I thought you and the Canadians were partners,” Volz said.
“Not anymore.”
Volz asked Tobin if he was gathering any geoduck.
“A little here and there. Not much.”
Tobin was probing. He’d tried casualness with Harrington and directness with Volz, but it was clear that neither offered satisfaction. The next day, Tobin again spoke with Harrington and asked him to track down Special Agent Richard Severtson. Tobin said he was furious that no one had told him Nichols DeCourville had finished his prison term. He feared for his safety. Oh, and the Feds still owed him money for the gasoline, cell phones, and geoducks he’d used during a year of work undercover. Perhaps it was time he sicced his attorneys on the U.S. government. He complained that people were spreading false rumors about him, saying that he was out there “doing this or doing that.” The same rumors had trailed him when he’d worked for the Feds. Now he was getting threatening calls—payback for helping the cops. Someone with a heavy Italian accent, probably DeCourville, had called to tell him his days were numbered.