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<\/a>Illustration by Mark Garrison<\/p><\/div>\n
The criminal charges against Rafael couldn\u2019t come at a worse time for the fishing industry here, which has been beaten down by the unforgiving arithmetic of the underwater world. While haddock have multiplied to healthy numbers, cod and flounder stocks remain excruciatingly, stubbornly, almost spitefully, low. But because trawl nets are indiscriminate, fishermen can\u2019t readily take advantage of the haddock bounty without exceeding pitiful caps on diminished stocks. Locals say they spend more time avoiding fish than trying to catch them.<\/p>\n
Some fishermen want to make the rules more flexible, working with regulators to open up closed fishing grounds, change rules on fishing gear, and put a cap on how big a chunk of the fishery a single person can control. But Rafael\u2019s lies have polluted data on the health of a large fraction of New England\u2019s 20 groundfish stocks and, potentially, scallops as well, making any reform all the more controversial. If the only people thriving are crooks\u2014and Rafael\u2019s fleet has racked up more serious violations than most\u2014it raises the question of whether groundfishing in New England has an honest future.<\/p>\n
I had called Rafael on his cellphone before showing up here, and he warned me if I stopped by his business, Carlos Seafood, he\u2019d throw me out. After the auction, I introduce myself and ask if he\u2019d be willing to talk seafood. He scans my face with his eyes, like a fish cutter deciding where to plunge the knife. \u201cNo,\u201d he says. To tell his story I\u2019d have to unravel his legacy without his assistance, but he had left behind a trail of court documents, government records, embittered rivals, and, most damningly, his own words.<\/p>\n
The Portuguese Connection<\/h2>\n
The king of New England groundfish was born on Portuguese soil on June 29, 1952. It was an oppressive time for the Portuguese people, under the rule of a dictatorship for over two decades, which\u2014like most imperial powers at the time\u2014was struggling with colonial independence movements. Rafael grew up on the Azores islands, well over 1,000 kilometers from the mainland, but the distance would not buffer him from the military draft. At the age of 12, his father sent him to a monastery school to avoid fighting in Portugal\u2019s wars in Africa. But Rafael dreamed of a freer life and orchestrated his expulsion as part of his personal campaign to get his family to move to America. It worked. In 1968, when Rafael was 15, he arrived in Massachusetts, according to a 2004 interview he gave as part of a New Bedford oral history project.<\/p>\n
In a poetic way, Rafael was simply following generations of Portuguese before him. From its earliest days as a whaling port\u2014it was on these cobbled streets that Herman Melville was inspired to write Moby Dick\u2014<\/em>New Bedford has been attracting Portuguese seamen. Parts of the city today feel less like a Yankee fishing village and more like old Portugal. At Tia Maria\u2019s European Cafe, you can still get chouri\u00e7o<\/em> sandwiches on Portuguese rolls and finish it off with an espresso and a pastel de<\/em> nata\u2014<\/em>a traditional custard tart.<\/p>\n Rafael\u2019s first job in his new country was making lingui\u00e7a<\/em> sausage at Amaral\u2019s\u2014a New Bedford institution still in operation today. Back in those days, the money in New Bedford was all about cod, so, naturally, Rafael moved into the fish business.<\/p>\n Eighty kilometers off the coast lies Georges Bank, an underwater mesa where the Gulf Stream collides with the Labrador Current, stirring up nutrients from the depths and creating one of the most productive marine areas on Earth. From February to April, large schools of cod rise from the Atlantic and migrate across the rocky, shallow waters of the bank in order to spawn and hunt eels and other prey. Cod are a wise-looking fish. They can grow upward of 90 kilograms over their 20-year lifespan and have a fleshy sensory organ dangling from their chin that looks like a Fu Manchu mustache. Battered and fried, cod are the fish of choice for fish and chips. The Portuguese like to dry and salt them\u2014a preparation known as bacalhau.<\/em><\/p>\n Rafael started hauling boxes of fish, and eventually became an apprentice fish cutter on the wharf. \u201cSix, seven months later, I was the second or the third best cutter that they had in there,\u201d Rafael said in his oral history. \u201cI went to the owner and I told him, \u2018You gotta give me a raise.\u2019\u201d When the owner refused, Rafael started working for a competitor.<\/p>\n After a few years climbing the ranks, he saw an opportunity to launch his own business, Portuguese-American Seafood, by operating as a so-called nightrider. While many fishermen sold their catch at the old city auction each morning, those who were more impatient, more desperate for cash, or wanted to avoid taxes, would unload directly with Rafael at cut-rate prices. \u201cBuy low and sell high, that\u2019s the name of the game,\u201d Rafael said.<\/p>\n Illustration by Mark Garrison<\/p><\/div>\n Things were going well until his enterprise went bust\u2014one source says his partner ran off with the company cash\u2014and he had to start over. In the spring of 1980\u2014with three trucks to his name and a $5,000 loan\u2014he launched Carlos Seafood, the same company he runs today. He bragged that he would work three days straight without sleeping. \u201cI needed toothpicks to keep my eyes open,\u201d he later said. He eventually broke into the old boys\u2019 network that controlled access to the city auction. After six months, he had $250,000 cash in his hands. He built a 10-bedroom house and bought his first two fishing vessels.<\/p>\n In those days, the city auction, which started with a bell at 8:00 a.m. and ended 22 minutes later, was a circus. The boats all went for bidding simultaneously, and the entire boatload would end up\u2014sight unseen\u2014at the docks of the winner, where they could be unloaded. The auction rewarded enthusiasm and social status rather than hard numbers. Typically, an established buyer would get an auctioneer\u2019s attention and bark out prices per pound for each species on a particular boat. The auctioneer then scribbled the prices down on a chalkboard along with the bidder\u2019s initials.<\/p>\n When subsequent buyers shouted out competing bids, the first bidder could defend it by shouting \u201c10\u201d\u2014a tenth of a cent increase. This system made it tricky for upstarts to get in on the action, but Rafael found he could bid a whopping price for one species on a particular boat to get his letter\u2014C\u2014on the board. Then, he could lowball the rest of the haul. \u201cCarlos was good at elbowing the other guys and yelling loudly to get the boats,\u201d says Armando Estudante, a retired fisherman who was friendly with Rafael in those days.<\/p>\n Because the auction prices were nonbinding, when the boat unloaded at Rafael\u2019s dock, he would complain about the quality of the fish and haggle like no one else. By that point, it was too late or too much of a hassle for the captain to find a new buyer. \u201cI didn\u2019t steal it from anybody,\u201d Rafael said in the oral history. \u201cMaybe I hustled a lot of fishermen down there, y\u2019know wheelin\u2019 and dealin\u2019, but shame on them if they didn\u2019t know better.\u201d Some fishermen got smart and refused to sell to him. \u201cNo \u2018C\u2019\u201d the auctioneer would write under their boats. Felicio Louren\u00e7o, who died in 2008, was once so angry about being manipulated that he allegedly pulled a gun on Rafael.<\/p>\n Rafael\u2019s first serious brush with the law came in 1984. He hadn\u2019t been paying his taxes: he figured the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) could wait while he grew his company. The government disagreed. He spent four and a half months in federal prison for tax evasion and said he had to pay $750,000 for back taxes and penalties when he was released. \u201cAs I was paying them off, I was still making extra money,\u201d he boasted. At its peak, Carlos Seafood was processing on the order of 10 million kilograms of fish per year, estimates Eric Nunes, who ran a competing company in New Bedford, Sea View Fillet Company.<\/p>\n Throughout the 1980s, New Bedford fishermen became notorious for poaching Canadian fish. To settle a long-running territorial dispute, in 1984, the International Court of Justice in The Hague drew a line down the center of Georges Bank, which effectively gave the Canadians three-quarters of the cod fishery. \u201cThey took the richest fishing grounds away from our boats,\u201d says Nunes, who left the business in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n When Canadian officials chased after the pirate fishing vessels, the crew would form a human chain on deck to guard the engine room from gunfire. Then, they\u2019d drop their pants and bend over. The Canadians arrested fishermen in their waters and seized their vessels, creating a diplomatic row with the United States.<\/p>\n If the law couldn\u2019t stop the New Bedford fishermen, nature would. In 1992, cod stocks dropped to five percent of their historical levels. In a single year, the value of the port\u2019s seafood landings declined from $150-million to $100-million. As the industry was tanking, some of the biggest processors were caught falsely branding Canadian fish as American and selling them to the US military. There was so little fish in the 1990s that one mobster was using fishing vessels to smuggle cocaine and pot into New Bedford.<\/p>\n Carlos Rafael, once a scrappy underdog, seized upon the tough times to invest in establishing his own fishing fleet to guarantee a steady supply of fish for the processors\u2019 blades. He\u2019d partner with captains and then buy them out when they retired or got fed up with his verbal abuse. Jose Farias, a Portuguese welder who was a co-owner of Rafael\u2019s boats for seven years, says that, strangely enough, when he sold his share to Rafael in 2007, he wasn\u2019t one cent richer. \u201cI don\u2019t make no money,\u201d he told me over the phone in broken English. \u201cHe\u2019s the one who do all the paperwork. He go to office and do the settlements.\u201d<\/p>\n With his trademark Winston cigarette in hand, Carlos Rafael looks on as a crew member unloads halibut from the Titan<\/em>. For more than 30 years, Rafael has been misrepresenting his catch and circumnavigating the quota system. Photo by Peter Pereira\/the Standard-Times<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n Pissing people off was the collateral damage of Rafael\u2019s greed. He began treating the docks as his personal shipyard, leaving derelict vessels hanging around for years. When harbor personnel tried to get him to move a boat to make room for another fisherman, Rafael threatened their lives, according to two sources who declined to be named for fear of retaliation. \u201cI\u2019ll grab you by the neck and throw you down these stairs,\u201d he told one fisherman, according to a source. \u201cI\u2019ll throw you in the water and when you try to climb up, I\u2019ll hold your head down,\u201d he allegedly told another. Rafael never followed through on any of these threats, but they nonetheless left their recipients shaken.<\/p>\n In 2002, when the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began an effort to remove nine sunken ships from the harbor floor as part of a Superfund cleanup, Rafael had a leaky fishing vessel\u2014Just a Girl<\/em>\u2014tied up in the Herman Melville Shipyard with a pump running every couple of days to keep it afloat. Rather than move his boat so that the EPA could complete its work, he allowed it to sink and let the government deal with the added cleanup. When the EPA sent him the bill, he sued and lost.<\/p>\n A few years later, a 38-year-old dockworker named Jose Baptista died of carbon-monoxide fumes while working below deck on Rafael\u2019s boat the Sandra-Lee<\/em>. Rafael told the Standard-Times<\/em><\/a> that he felt awful about it. \u201cIt\u2019s beyond our control,\u201d he said. When the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigated, he refused to answer their questions on the advice of his lawyer. The agency later fined him $46,000 for negligence.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to say exactly when the man who started his career as a fish cutter became The Codfather. Was it in 1995, when he beat federal charges of price-fixing? Was it in 1995, when he bought three scallop boats when the fishery had collapsed and made a killing when it opened up again the next year? Or was it in 1999, when he was arrested for lying to authorities about his fishing history in order to get special permits for squid and black sea bass?<\/p>\n \u201cI am a pirate,\u201d Rafael told regulators<\/a> during a federal fisheries management meeting, \u201cIt\u2019s your job to catch me.\u201d Over two decades, he racked up more than half a million dollars in fines for more than 30 federal fishing violations. His boats have been cited for overfishing, failing to throw back undersized fish and lobsters bearing eggs, having boats with secret coolers in them, blocking coast guard inspectors from boarding, failing to declare fishing trips, and filing false reports on his catch. For Rafael, it was just the cost of doing business.<\/p>\n Carlos Rafael makes a business call from the bridge of the Athena<\/em>, one of his 36 fishing vessels that together control one-fifth of New England\u2019s cod quota. Photo by Peter Pereira\/the Standard-Times<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n A couple of years ago, when the US Coast Guard boarded Rafael\u2019s boat the Bulldog<\/em> in the Gulf of Maine, the trawl winch began unspooling, sending the net plunging into the ocean and out of sight. The feds suspected the winch brake had been released on purpose. They later retrieved the net and discovered it had an illegal liner designed to prevent undersized fish from slipping through the regulation mesh. The case is under investigation and the captain declined to comment for this article on the advice of his lawyer.<\/p>\n Alan Sherman, who has captained another Rafael boat, Resolute<\/em>, for six years, says Rafael doesn\u2019t meddle with his fishing and he doesn\u2019t meddle with Rafael\u2019s shoreside business. When Sherman doesn\u2019t like something Rafael has to say, he\u2019s willing to push back. \u201cThat\u2019s the trouble with some of these guys that have worked for him,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re afraid of him.\u201d And just as fishermen are afraid of Rafael, they\u2019re also afraid for their future.<\/p>\n One morning last summer, I stop by Bergie\u2019s Seafood, a small fish house on the waterfront frequented by fishermen who don\u2019t want to sell at an auction dominated by Rafael. After passing through a vinyl curtain into the cool warehouse, I tiptoe around puddles of water on the concrete floor to the carpeted side office and find David Stanley, the vice president of vessel operations, sitting at a computer. \u201cWhat Carlos did affects the whole industry,\u201d he says bitterly. \u201cGives us all a big, fat black eye.\u201d If he\u2019s angry at Rafael, he\u2019s even angrier at the federal government for letting the fishing business collapse. \u201cWe got fucked,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In 2010, New England fisheries shifted to a catch shares management system\u2014a kind of cap and trade for fish, where a fisherman or group of fishermen is secured a share of the annual catch. These shares are based on each fisherman\u2019s catch history. The system was supposed to help fishermen avoid a frenzy of competition at the start of each season. They\u2019d be able to fish smarter and reduce the amount of by-catch thrown overboard. But the system has been hamstrung by the uneven recovery of fish stocks.<\/p>\n In 2016, the New England fleet was allowed to catch more than 50,000 tonnes of haddock, but they could only bring up about 1,000 tonnes of cod in the process. They also had to avoid two overfished species of flatfish\u2014American plaice and witch flounder. If an individual fisherman brought up more than his or her share of these species, he or she could buy pricey allocations from other fishermen. But once the fishery-wide quota for any single stock was met, the entire groundfishery came to a halt. In 2015, US fishermen left 76 percent of their haddock quota\u2014worth more than $100-million wholesale\u2014in the ocean.<\/p>\n Total US landings from Georges Bank of Atlantic cod, yellowtail flounder, and haddock from 1960 to 2007. Illustration by Mark Garrison<\/p><\/div>\n Catch shares, however, were working swimmingly for Rafael, who said he had accumulated 60 permits and stacked them onto 15 active vessels. He was a pathological whiner, however. He told the press he was tired of paying taxes and angry that Massachusetts had singled him out in restricting a federal aid fund for the troubled fishing industry. In early 2015, he announced that he planned to sell off all his boats and move to Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony off the coast of Africa. \u201cI\u2019m gonna cash in and screw,\u201d he said<\/a>. Some thought he was just puffing himself up. But he was serious.<\/p>\n Soon after, a pair of Russian immigrants with sketchy backgrounds reached out to him through a broker and paid a visit to his office that June. Rafael told them he wanted $175-million for the business, but, according to his financial statements, its assets only amounted to $21-million and it was just bringing in between $3- and $4-million in revenue each year.<\/p>\n What gives?<\/em> the Russians asked.<\/p>\n Rafael pulled a ledger from his desk with the word \u201ccash\u201d on the front. \u201cWe are profitable,\u201d he told them. \u201cYou will not see it on paper for Carlos Seafood.\u201d<\/p>\n While he was claiming a loss of almost half a million that year, he showed them he brought in an extra $600,000 in cash in just six months. Every day he had a boat come into port, he was sending his fish to Michael Perretti, a convicted felon who ran South Street Seafoods in New York, and Perretti was sending him \u201cjingles\u201d\u2014cash\u2014that he was flying back to Portugal.<\/p>\n At that moment, Rafael seemed to realize what he was admitting to the two strangers. \u201cYou could be the IRS in here. This could be a clusterfuck. So I\u2019m trusting you. The only thing is, I open myself because both of you is Russians and I don\u2019t think they would have two Russians. Fuck me\u2014that would be some bad luck!\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, the two Russians and the supposed broker were undercover federal agents, and they were recording the entire conversation for a joint investigation by the IRS and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Over the next year, they would meet with Rafael again and again at his office or a restaurant to learn about the inner workings of his business.<\/p>\n During one meeting in January 2016, he told them about the Hera II<\/em>, which had recently come back from a trip. Rafael\u2019s employees had unloaded 2,084 kilograms of plaice, which fishermen call dabs, from the hull. Rafael\u2019s entire fleet had the right to catch about 100,000 kilograms of dabs that year, and if he went over his quota he\u2019d have to buy more for $2.20 per kilogram. By reporting as many as possible as haddock, a plentiful fish, he could avoid going over his quota and avoid paying a cent.<\/p>\n<\/a>Catch Me if You Can<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/a>The Untouchable Fish<\/h2>\n
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