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To one man, he’s a crook. To another, he’s Robin Hood. He wasn’t in the room, but he was the center of attention.
His name is Carlos Rafael. You might know him as The Codfather.
Three fishing experts and a podcaster drew a crowd of more than 140 to the Whaling Museum on Monday night for “Catching The Codfather,” a live panel discussion about the GBH podcast by the same name. GBH hosted the event in partnership with The Light.
“Catching The Codfather,” delved into the rise and fall of the infamous fishing magnate and what his story reveals about New Bedford’s fishing industry. In 2017, Rafael was convicted of tax evasion and fish mislabeling, among other charges, for a scheme designed to get around fishing quotas. He was sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison and required to sell his $100 million fleet.
Rafael, whose fleet dominated New Bedford’s waterfront at its peak, was interviewed for the podcast. He declined the invitation to Monday’s event, telling Ian Coss, who narrated and co-produced the podcast, that he would be in the Azores.
Coss, who moderated the panel, said no other story he’s worked on has received as much feedback as “Catching The Codfather,” and it came from two sides that couldn’t have been further apart. One listener called Rafael a “folk hero,” while another compared him to Al Capone, Coss said.
“I had a sense when we put out the series of just how polarizing he is as a subject, but even still, I was amazed by the intensity of the reactions to the show,” he said.
Rafael’s illegal fishing put him at odds with John Bullard, the former mayor of New Bedford who served as regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries during the height of Rafael’s fishing empire.
The agency was responsible for setting and enforcing the fish quotas that Rafael flouted. Bullard didn’t hold back when asked what he thought of the Codfather.
“I don’t find him a sympathetic figure,” the former administrator said. “I find him a crook who happened to be in the business of fishing.”
Bullard said Rafael’s mislabeling scheme undercut the scientific research that his agency depended on to regulate fisheries.
Fishermen like Bill Blount defend Rafael as a Robin Hood figure, defying fishing quotas they see as unfair. On the podcast, and at the Monday event, Blount told a story about getting caught in Hurricane Bob on a fishing boat with his 12-year-old son. Rafael bought Blount’s catch and made sure that his son got a cut of the proceeds for helping out in the storm.
“I found that dealing with Carlos, if you treated him fair, he treated you fair,” Blount said on the panel stage. “He had a heart.”
Will Sennott, a journalist and fisherman who previously reported on fishing for the New Bedford Light, said he remembered Rafael as a source who always picked up the phone. Sennott reported on Rafael’s new business activities in real estate after leaving federal prison and the rise and fall of private equity in New Bedford’s fishing industry after Rafael sold his fleet.
GBH’s “Catching the Codfather” is the second podcast about crime in New Bedford released by a major news organization in the last two years. The Boston Globe Spotlight Team investigated how New Bedford police misused the confidential informant system in “Snitch City” last year.
But the GBH series wasn’t just about Rafael’s life of crime. Coss also talked to scientists, government officials, and fishermen about the complex regulations designed to prevent overfishing. He said he tried pitching the podcast to his editors as “50 years of the Magnuson Act,” referring to the 1976 legislation that authorized the federal government to regulate fishing, but the story didn’t have the same allure without Rafael at the center.
Just like Rafael, the topic of fishing regulation is polarizing. Bullard and Blount represented two sides of the issue.
Bullard said the regulations are based on scientific measurements, but there is a lot about fisheries that scientists don’t fully understand.
“Counting fish is just like counting trees, except they’re invisible and they move,” he said, drawing a laugh from the crowd.
That uncertainty caught Sennott and Coss off guard in their reporting, they both said. Journalists often are told to “trust the science,” Sennott said, but that’s harder to do when the studies aren’t perfect.
Determining quotas using those measurements is delicate and difficult, Bullard said. NOAA Fisheries must try to preserve fish populations without destroying the fishing industry — as one fishing port mayor once told him, if the fish processing plants go out of business and turn into condos, they don’t turn back.
Fishermen bring their own strong opinions about the science into this messy democratic process, he said. Bullard paraphrased the famous Winston Churchill quote, that democracy is the worst form of government — except all the others.
“I am convinced, 50 years after Magnuson, that this is the way to manage fisheries,” he said.
Unlike Rafael, the vast majority of fishermen do try to stick to the regulations, Bullard said. But it’s not always a recipe for business success.
Blount said he has always followed the rules, some of which he disagreed with, and sometimes that meant he “got screwed.” At 80, he’s quit fishing, and he said none of his seven children have followed in his footsteps. They were discouraged after seeing him weather so many tough, unprofitable years, he said
“Bill is a poster child for struggling fishermen,” Bullard said. “It’s a struggle for everybody.”
Bullard said that’s why he found Rafael’s crimes so offensive — the Codfather took a “shortcut” to make more money, draining the fishery, he said, while other fishermen tried to play fair under a very complex set of shifting rules.
Some in the audience brought their own strong opinions on Rafael. Jim Kendall urged people to “give the devil his due.”
“I knew Carlos — I knew the other side of Carlos,” he said. “He earned a lot of what he had.”
Robin Nunes, whose ex-husband Eric Nunes was indicted with Rafael in 1994 (they were acquitted in that case), said she remembers the Codfather’s erratic driving on their way to the courthouse in Boston.
“He was so worried about going back to jail,” Nunes said. “I said, ‘Carlos, you’re gonna kill us the way you’re driving!’”
One audience member asked Coss what he thought of Rafael after reporting on him for so long. Coss said he’s often asked whether he thinks Rafael is a hero or a crook. He wrestled with that over the course of the six-hour podcast.
“And that is the best answer I can give.”
Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org
Two issues here, both are separate and distinct.
Carlos Rafael is simply a thief, nothing more and nothing less.
He is still in the fishing industry by way of his loans on the boats he sold. The loans are repaid from the profits of fishing ( or other activities). Should a loan default occur, he repossesses the boat and is again a boat owner in New Bedford.
The Magnuson Act concerns governmental fishing regulations for better or worse.