Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11

week I told you I don't like aquarium touch tanks.

Well, I thought about it.

I still don't.

Anyway, this is part two of our two-part series called Missing Helen.

If you missed the first part, just go back one episode and catch up.

Or you can dive in halfway and be confused.

It's your life.

Do whatever you want.

I'm Steve Bussemi, and you're listening to Big Time.

an Apple original podcast from Peace of Work Entertainment and Campside Media in association with Olive Productions.

Rajiv Gola will take it from here.

When we last left off, our precious baby, Miss Helen, had been rescued and her kidnapper arrested.

But before he was hauled away to prison, he told the local news why he'd taken the shark.

He claimed he was an animal rights activist and was protecting the shark from negligence and poor conditions at the aquarium.

But no one really took him seriously.

It seemed like a wildcard defense tactic, just something he said to put a positive spin on things.

But as I read through the police investigation, I saw that his wife had told the investigating officer a similar story, that she believed Anthony was, quote, not trying to sell the shark.

He wanted to help.

On top of that, I also learned that Jenny Spellman, the brick wall, who served as the general manager of the aquarium during the whole incident, actually stepped down from her position less than a year after the whole thing.

They have great intentions.

The ways that they do things are absolutely batshit crazy.

When I asked her about it, she told me she left over her concerns about one of the founders of the aquarium, a man named Amon Covino.

My eternal optimism said, hey, I can fix the Cavinos.

I can fix this.

I've heard bad things, but I'm here now.

I was only in charge to a point.

You can have as many arguments and conversations and discussions with upper management as you want, but at the end of the day, they're going to make the decisions.

It's their money, it's their business, it's their property.

Ammon refuses to get permits for anything.

He thinks that he shouldn't have to get them, and I don't understand why you don't need permits.

Building permits, that's what I dealt with.

Believe me, that was a nightmare trying to keep a relationship with the city in order to get building permits when you're working with somebody who thinks all permits are bullshit.

As it turns out, building permits aren't the only permits that Amon Covino has issues with.

Amon Covino pled guilty to wildlife trafficking charges.

He was sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison.

I realized that there was really nothing that I could do.

When we got into the story, we thought the shark thief was the real star of the show.

Then we thought it was Miss Helen, who'd gotten so big time that her whereabouts needed to be kept secret.

But once we decided to take a closer look at the kidnappers' claims, well, we found a much bigger fish, Amon Covino.

With all the red flags stacking up, I decided to take a closer look to see if there was any truth to the allegations against him.

My name's Amon Covino.

That's the short and sweet of it.

The touch pools, the interactive exhibits, and the petting zoos, these were all part of the vision that Amon Covino had been pursuing for years to bring animals and people closer together.

I think there's a lack of animal interaction with humans on this planet.

It's just the world getting out of balance and the oceans getting out of balance.

We have millions of people a year go through our aquariums.

Millions.

More than any other aquarium in the country, period.

And when you have that kind of volume and you're teaching people, these are animals we should love.

These are animals we should care for.

So when Amon heard that some guy had stolen a shark from his aquarium, and then when the thief was caught, he claimed he was doing it to protect the shark from mistreatment, Ammon wasn't exactly pleased.

Well, was the animal being harmed, right?

That's the first thing.

Second thing is, the parameters of the water are perfect.

He had to dig his hands all the way to his shoulders to get the fish out.

It's not designed to be that way.

Those sharks and all those fish have a way to get away from people if they don't want to be touched.

In fact, if you want to touch one of the animals, they have to come up to you because the animals need to feel safe.

And that's what we try to create there at the aquarium.

Ammon Cavino started the San Antonio facility back in 2014, but it was far from his first foray into aquariums.

For most of his life, he was actually in the construction business, but he was first and foremost a fish person.

He had a large aquarium at home with exotic fish that he adored and tended to meticulously.

In 2001, he decided to make good on his passions and start a fish store.

That's where he had the idea to set up a touch pool for kids to learn about different animals.

Kids would come from schools and school groups and school buses and it was just, I couldn't believe it.

I was like, this is out of control.

And so I started setting up little exhibits through the aquarium, little octopus exhibit.

Here's a mantis shrimp, all kinds of different things that we would set up, seahorses, starfish.

And we noticed real quick that people would come in, look at all the animals and leave, and then the cash register wasn't opening, right?

I wasn't selling any fish.

But when I started charging a dollar per head, we made $1,800 in one week.

And I thought, oh gosh, this is a real good way to do it.

Ammon seems to hit upon a gold fame.

People loved his facilities, and he was keen to grow the business.

So he brought in his brother, Vince, as an investor.

In short order, he had facilities in cities across the country, all offering guests the opportunity to interact with fish, birds, lemurs, iguanas, otters, and dozens of other wild animals.

Eventually, the two brothers went their separate ways.

Ammon managed the Austin, Houston, and San Antonio aquariums, while Vince took the interactive idea and set up more than a dozen SeQuest aquariums within just a few years.

If you want a taste of the Cavino family, Ammon's brother Vince actually made a reality show about SeQuest and its employees called Fishy Bidness.

And it's a brave, artistic endeavor full of Dutch angles, soft focus, and low-budget graphics.

My name is Vince Cavino.

I'm the founder and CEO of SeQuest,

an interactive zoo aquarium attraction like none other.

We're the fastest growing zoo aquarium company in the world.

We have to keep staff paid and over 35,000 animals.

That we have continuous disputes with animal rights activists.

But it's the crew of SeQuest that make this place one fishy business.

Ammon, the older brother who started the aquarium business, was notably absent from the production.

My brother just wanted to be a reality star or something, and they just kind of did a couple of videos.

I think he spent about half a million on production of doing stuff.

Not the kind of thing I like to watch, necessarily.

And I thought, I'm not going to do that.

That's crazy.

Last thing I want to be is on a TV show in front of anybody.

In talking with Ammon, it seemed like he genuinely believed in his mission, to bring animals and people closer together.

He seemed to truly believe it was the right thing to do and that it would create a lot more harmony between humans and the environment around them.

In some grand sense, it really felt like he was trying to save the world by creating good experiences and core memories between children and their favorite animals.

And he didn't want to seem to grandstand or take credit in a big public way for it either.

But despite Ammon's best efforts to stay out of the limelight, he's become a major target on the radar of Michelle Sennett and the organization she works for.

I am the director of captive animal law enforcement at the PETA Foundation.

Now, when you think PETA, you probably think about fur coats and red paint.

crazy publicity stunts and super shrill activists.

But that's just the tip of the spear.

PETA's meat and potatoes, or sorry, just potatoes, is much more dull organizing and legal work.

And Michelle is an integral part of that machine.

She's even killed, super organized, and honestly, one of the more normal people we spoke to in this story.

According to Michelle, there is more than a grain of truth to the shark thief's claims.

The San Antonio Aquarium and other facilities run by the Cavina family have been under scrutiny from PETA and the federal government for years.

The San Antonio Aquarium shark in the stroller incident to me highlights how problematic these facilities are in that someone can just walk in, grab an animal out of a tank and walk away.

There's no one monitoring what is happening.

I mean, that's dangerous for the public.

It's also dangerous for the animals involved because there's nobody making sure that everyone in that situation is safe.

Wild animals should not be housed in interactive environments where the public can just touch them willy-nilly.

There's no way to house them in a shopping mall in a way that's safe for the public or that protects that animal's welfare.

Turns out Ammon is no stranger to this line of criticism, that what he sees as bridging connections between species can be interpreted as animal exploitation.

And well, when we got into that, it felt like we started seeing a totally different side of him.

And things went off the rails pretty quickly.

For the animal activists that say that there should be no contact between whatever is essentially a wild animal and humans,

I mean,

what is your response to that?

Challenge it to anybody who says that keeping a lemur specifically in captivity and not touching him would be better off in the long run than someone that did it and touched him.

They're wrong.

Dead wrong, period.

Math doesn't show that.

It doesn't work.

It's just because they're ignorant of it.

That's all.

Simple as that.

And if I had to make a case in a debate standing next to somebody who said the otherwise, I'd win every time.

Period.

For what it's worth, this is not true.

Lemurs are social animals, but that only means their health benefits from engaging with other lemurs, not humans.

Anyway.

So the public aquariums and the public zoos in this country have, I think, a responsibility to fix what the horrible people on this planet do by destroying environments for animals.

The Cofinos have a track record with facilities across the country of putting profits over animal welfare.

These animals are frequently not given the care that they need to survive, let alone given necessary veterinary care when issues arise.

There's a laundry list of allegations against Ammon's facility and his brother's sequest facilities.

And just a warning, they get pretty dark.

There's numerous accounts of animal enclosures in total disrepair, paint chipping, wood being gnawed at.

In one instance, the floor of a goat pen was made of sheet metal, which reached dangerous temperatures in the Texas sun.

There's been more than a handful of incidents of guests being bitten or scratched seriously.

At sequest facilities, there were accounts of dozens of parakeets dropping dead from mysterious illnesses, or simply being stomped to death by unmonitored children.

According to one employee, the birds were thrown into the garbage so they didn't have to record the birds that died.

In another case, a wallaby drowned in a water tank overnight at a Sequest facility because there was no way for it to get out.

Two sloths have died from dietary issues, unknown illnesses, and stress.

SeQuest has denied all allegations of mistreatment and says these deaths and ailments are simply the unfortunate side of running a zoo facility.

We have a list of citations from the USDA saying that the Austin Aquarium, the Houston Aquarium, the

these facilities no you don't

no you don't I don't have a list of citations we're you know what the USDA inspector said to us you're one of the best facilities in the state of Texas you're better than the Dallas Zoo do you have that in writing because we have the USDCA citations in writing they've told us in person now what are the citations for read them read what it is well yeah it's uh a critical citation for failing to provide a young giraffe with wholesome and palatable food in 2022 a USDA inspector cited ammon's facility in Houston for underfeeding a baby giraffe they had just acquired and failing to get it the nutrients it needed to grow.

According to the citation, quote, approximately one month after arriving at the facility, he developed a life-threatening neurological condition, which veterinary records indicate was diet-related.

First of all, that's wrong.

We have vets that know that's not what happened.

The diet that was given was an approved diet by USDA vets.

Period.

They've signed off on it.

They signed off on it.

And then USDA comes out and cites me for feeding the animal wrong diet.

I said, well, look, guess what, Mr.

USDA Inspector?

You're wrong.

It's not that you're dumb.

You just are ignorant of it because you haven't researched it.

I'm sure you have lots of stuff you do, but what you don't know is what a giraffe eats.

That's what you don't know.

Unfortunately, sometimes Other people that are experts know more than the people that are vets that are hired by USDA.

Some people have a higher level of intelligence than others, and some people have a higher level of study than others.

They just don't understand.

It's simple as that.

They just don't have the comprehension to understand it.

They're ignorant of it.

And I'm not saying they're stupid.

They're just ignorant when it comes to animals.

I've been dealing with animals my whole life.

I've got pictures of me with babies when I was with a baby-injured bird when I was five.

Once that switch flipped and Ammon went into defensive mode, it didn't come off for the rest of the interview.

Honestly, it felt like the dial just kept turning higher and higher as we went on.

And she says, well, really, it's kind of a free way to get a check and I like to be able to say I'm supporting something.

And she says, to tell you the truth, I like your aquarium, but I'm a single mom.

I used to be a stripper.

That's what I did for a living.

This is easier for me.

And then she pulled out her phone and started scrolling the pictures of a deer that she had as a pet that was sleeping on her bed next to her dogs.

And I thought, oh, okay, well, what are you doing?

Why do you have a deer in your house on your bed?

What's going on with that?

So

there's no organization from top to bottom.

They lie to people.

Wow.

All right.

Let's reset here for a moment

and talk about why PETA took an interest in Amon Cavino in the first place.

We focus our attention on the worst of the worst.

And Amon Covino's wildlife trafficking conviction certainly put them on our radar real fast.

Ammon's conviction goes all the way back to the first aquarium he opened in Idaho.

That enterprise had been plagued with legal troubles from the get-go.

He had already run afoul of the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service for illegally housing puffins.

But the crime that eventually sent him to prison was that he was caught illegally importing stingrays and lemon sharks, a threatened species, from an unlicensed fish catcher off the coast of Florida.

Ammon didn't have the proper permits to buy or show those fish.

And what's more, the seller had told him he was selling the fish without a proper license.

And when he asked if he could purchase them, he was, you know, the guy in Florida said, I can't sell you these animals without a permit.

I don't have a permit.

So he knew that this was illegal.

And he basically said, the quote from the indictment is just start doing it who gives a shit man

Ammon was sentenced to a year in prison for wildlife trafficking protected species for buying those fish without proper permits but as you might imagine Ammon's version of the story is a bit different he feels he was set up by the federal government he says he was trying to do the right thing helping out a friend down on his luck by buying his sharks and when he found out about the permitting issue ammon claims he went to all the relevant authorities to clear the purchase at the state level.

But when the fish came in, cops bust in and arrested him anyway.

Turns out the fish seller had been working with the feds for years.

When you deal with the federal government, they kind of do things dirty because that's how they are a little bit.

All they're trying to do is put someone in jail.

I spent two years, 23 months, in federal prison lockup.

18 of those months were in maximum security.

I didn't break the law, I did as straight as an arrow.

Christian kid, right?

And they put me in a cell that was a 10 by 8.

and that door opened one hour a day to take a shower that's it so you put somebody like that in that kind of environment it's really difficult and and why why do that what did i do i bought a fish from a guy who lied about catching it i paid for that animal i paid for it i filled up permits twice for it and

what he did then is

entrap me to buy two animals, a stingray and a shark, while he didn't have a fishing license on permit.

Legally, he lied about it, and then he baited me to it, and the federal government told him how to do it.

Oh, we're going to get this guy.

Now, to reiterate, this is Ammon's version of events, and it's not backed up at all by the eight-year-long undercover investigation federal authorities conducted to take down fish smuggling off of Florida's coasts.

And to reiterate again, Ammon was found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison for these crimes, which he says were apparently not illegal and entirely fabricated.

It seemed that no matter what claim claim or allegation we brought up, Amon had a response that turned the whole thing upside down.

Like when we asked why he had his nephew call the shark seller to ask him to delete all his records.

Well, what I didn't want to do is I didn't want to get the guy in trouble that had sent it to me.

Number one.

Number two, there was two sharks that were coming.

Another one was on its way.

And I said, cancel that shark.

I certainly don't want a second shark to come illegally.

That's what was told.

Or when we asked him about an incident where a 10-year-old girl was bitten by a lemur and sent to the hospital.

Well, it's not a bite, right?

Let's be real, it's not a bite because it's not considered a bite unless it breaks the skin.

We also have a photo of the injury, and yeah, it broke the skin.

But what really set him off was when we asked about his probation, which prohibited him from working with any aquarium or zoo.

What's the deal there?

Let's bring this out, too.

You ready for this?

This is great.

In my stipulations for probation, it said these words: you cannot buy, sell, transport, or exhibit fish or animal wildlife.

Those are the four things.

I didn't do that.

I didn't buy, sell, transport, or exhibit animals.

But he was caught emailing the construction managers at his brother's new sequest locations five days after being released from prison.

I was building a facility that would potentially hold animals or could hold animals in the future.

But apparently.

That is not against the probation violation.

Why keep going back to the aquarium business?

I'm not in it.

Not in it.

And I mean, after that probation, in the construction, why keep working with these aquariums?

Because I wasn't breaking the law.

I never did.

I've never broken the law.

I'm confused what your involvement is.

That's our producer, Morgan.

I think I'm just still confused.

You want to get the bad guy here, right?

You want to get the guy here.

Absolutely not.

So I'm just...

Okay.

They don't need me.

The place has been running itself for years and years and years.

I haven't been involved.

I prefer to be at home listening to my music, chilling with my family, watering my plants, picking strawberries.

That's what I do.

I don't interact with the aquarium, nor do I care.

Ammon continues to insist that he has nothing to do with the operation of the aquariums that his wife owns today.

But the reason we reached out to Ammon in the first place is because his name was all over the news articles about Miss Helen and the shark thief.

Even on the aquarium's own website, he was listed as the owner of the San Antonio Aquarium.

And in articles, we found him referred to as, quote, Amon Covino, the aquarium's chief operating officer, which didn't really square with everything he was telling us now.

I'll tell you why.

Because my name, Amon Covino, had been smeared all across the country.

And I talked to a PR company that says really not much you can do about it.

You can't really get rid of those sites.

They're smear sites and whatever.

So what I did was

what I did was thought, well, what better opportunity than to get my name out as Amon Covino with a shark being stolen by a baby cart.

So when they search Amon Covino, that bumps up higher.

So they don't see, oh, this guy is, PETA hates him, and he's this horrible person.

So I took that as an advantage to be able to lower my name on Google searches.

Right, that's why I did that.

Very specific reason why.

We can go back and forth all day about the ethics of zoos and aquariums and if it's even possible to run one of these facilities responsibly.

If the disagreements between Amon, PETA, and the Shark Thief prove anything,

it's that there's more than one way to love a fish.

But you have to admit, the empire that Amon Cofino has built is impressive, and the handover fist success that he's had also seemed to convince him that the fact that he's being attacked is proof that he's doing something right.

So it's really frustrating.

It's frustrating to be treated unequal.

If I really cared one shit about it, I'd sue the federal government and I have a leg to stand on.

If I gave two shits, I'd spend time doing that, but I'm not going to.

It's in the past.

It's done.

It's gone.

It's buried.

It's done.

I've been mistreated by lots of people my whole life.

In fact, I talked to the...

Ah, it doesn't even matter.

This stuff's all shit.

It doesn't even matter.

It's all in the past.

What else you got for me?

These days, it's not just the USDA or PETA on the Cavinos case.

The call is coming from inside the house, too.

A group of former SeQuest employees have now started an online campaign to bring awareness to the alleged neglect they've seen at Covino Aquariums.

Their message to the public is simple.

If you don't want to abuse animals, don't give these people your money.

They've joined forces with activists and investigators from around the country to organize against these facilities.

And so far, they've been successful in blocking the construction of new aquariums in Florida and Connecticut.

Say you are sitting in a room across from an activist.

How do you make your final case to them?

Like if you had to like leave with a parting note?

This year I told more than 2 million people, don't cut the fins off a shark.

I've taught children to smile.

with their mothers and their fathers as they are able to touch a stingray for the first time in their life and feel it and know, hey, these animals aren't bad.

I've touched them.

They're pretty cool.

In fact, I like the way they touch, mom.

That's a memory, that's a core memory that teaches responsibility of what to do with the world.

What have you done?

Next week on Big Time, Oceans 420.

This has been Big Time, an Apple original podcast produced by Peace of Work Entertainment and Campside Media in association with Olive Productions.

It's hosted by me, Steve Bussemi.

This episode was reported and produced by Rajiv Gola and Morgan Jaffe.

Our story editor is Audrey Quinn.

Lane Rose is our showrunner and managing producer.

Our production team includes Amy Padulla and associate producer Dania Abdelhamid.

Fact-checking by Mary Mathis.

Sound design and mixing by Shawnee Aviram.

Our theme was written by Nicholas Principe and Peter Silberman of Spatial Relations.

Production helped from Austin Sisler of Eastside Music Studios and Paul Jones of Orrelation Studios.

Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Gregoriatis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scheer.

Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

Thanks for listening.