Page 6 - Bloomberg Businessweek July 2018

Bloomberg Businessweek
THE HEIST ISSUE

Detectives asked a local beekeeper named Ryan In beekeeper circles, it’s widely believed the arrested
Cousins to come down to the lot and help them ID the men are part of a larger criminal enterprise. But neither
hives so they could begin the process of getting the very the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office nor the district attor-
angry insects back to their rightful owners. Cunniff’s ney assigned to the case is pursuing that angle. The trial
boxes weren’t marked, but they were handmade and has yet to be scheduled, and the defendants have pleaded
had a unique configuration of frames inside. Cousins not guilty. Detectives initially feared the men would be a
recognized them from photos Valeri Strachan had flight risk, but they’ve appeared at every hearing. “I’m
posted on Facebook. a little surprised that they keep showing up,” Sheriff’s
The police called the Cunniffs in Montana, and Lloyd office spokesman Tony Botti says. “But they’re still insist-
and Brenda drove immediately to Great Falls to catch a ing they’ve done nothing wrong. I don’t understand it.”
flight to Fresno. They were on a stopover in Salt Lake
‘You’re not going to believe this, but we found two more S ometime this fall, Kelsey Peterson, a deputy district
City when a detective called with an update. “He said,
attorney and agriculture crimes prosecutor, will open
locations with your bees since you got on the plane this the state’s case against the two defendants in a courtroom
morning!’ ” Cunniff recalls. at the Fresno County Courthouse, which itself looks very
In California he went immediately to one of the lots and much like a honeycomb. As of late May, her investigator,
wandered through the rows of tipped and broken boxes, Doug Bolton, was still pursuing leads in the hope that she
angry bees buzzing around his head. “Hives were tipped might be able to add theft charges on top of possession.
over and mixed together,” Cunniff says. “Oh God, it was “I’d like to do that for the victims,” Peterson says.
like a nightmare.” Many had been split from their normal Cunniff trucked his bees home last summer, but he
two-story configuration into single hives, not to mention and Brenda had already started over with all new hives,
painted over and affixed with the new stencil. He spotted most of them started with Carniolan queens either given
some hives that looked familiar. He pulled out his phone to him or sold at an extreme discount by the Strachans.
and called the young man he’d met near Yuba City the day “We were starting over, and then all of a sudden these

74 his own hives were taken, the one who said he’d lost 300 other bees show up,” he says. He had to quarantine the
hives and was sure they were gone forever. He thought he old bees, to make sure they hadn’t picked up any diseases.
ought to tell him he was right: None of his bees were left. “That’s like a whole different operation. You can’t go work
“It was just empty equipment,” Cunniff says. on those colonies and then come work on the new colo-
The authorities recovered more than 600 hives at the nies unless you sterilize all your equipment and change
three locations, stolen over the course of at least three gloves,” he says. “I had to hire three or four guys just to
years. They charged Tveretinov, along with another try to keep up with all these different things that we were
Ukrainian immigrant, Vitaliy Yeroshenko, with 10 felony doing at the same time.”
counts of possession of stolen property, and estimated Insurance covered a chunk of his losses, but not the loss
that the value of the stolen equipment and bees was at of income from the missed almond season or all the honey
least $875,000, making it “the largest bee-theft investiga- he couldn’t make last year. This year his policy premiums
tion we’ve ever had,” says Arley Terrence, a sergeant in jumped $8,000. The insurance company also decided it
the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office. would no longer cover lost bees, only equipment.
Beekeepers from three states flew in to assess the That’s why, when January 2018 rolled around, Cunniff
damage and salvage what they could. “We had no inten- was once more doing the thing he’d hated to do in the
tion of bringing anything home,” Cunniff says. The insur- first place, the thing he’d thought he’d never do again. He
ance company had told him not to. “But once we got stacked his hives—456 of them—on a truck, strapped them
down there, there was so much equipment, we just down, and headed for California. This time he took pre-
couldn’t leave it.” cautions. Instead of bringing in the hives early to settle in
Cousins called some friends, who brought a truck and acclimate—but also give “everybody that’s crooked a
and a forklift and helped Cunniff load his gear and the chance to scope everything out and drive around and find
remaining bees. The truck wasn’t big enough to carry stuff that’s easy to get to”—Cunniff waited until the last pos-
it all, so they left some overnight, and when they went sible minute to take them west.
back in the morning it was gone. “They had come in and Unlike last year, the bees all came home. “They made
stolen some of the stuff, again,” Cunniff says. It was later some money, and we got them back in pretty good
recovered, again. shape,” he says. <BW>

July 2, 2018