Leo Grillo, Founder of World’s Largest No-Kill Sanctuary, Is Being Railroaded
Leo Grillo, 77, is in federal custody without bail—the charge: attempted kidnapping.
For 45 years, Grillo operated DELTA Rescue in Acton, California — the world’s largest no-kill, care-for-life animal sanctuary.
1,500 dogs, cats, and horses on 115 acres on a mountain ridge. Most of the dogs are pit bulls rescued from streets and deserts, the Angeles National Forest, and at the border, where people crossing over leave them.
Pitbulls, often used for fighting, when their age or skill left them the losers, maimed and abandoned, Grillo took them. He gave his whole life to rescuing and giving abandoned animals a home for life.
Grillo runs his sanctuary on one condition: No animal that gets there will be abandoned or euthanized. Care for life.
Grillo was the founder of the no-kill movement. He is part of history, the first to say we cannot kill them for they are like angels and organize on a big scale.
At D.E.L.T.A. Rescue, a dog lame from the cruelty of men may find a warm bed. A cat too frightened to trust may discover, by slow degrees, the gentler hand of kindness. Horses long forgotten on dusty roads are led, trembling, into pastures.
No animal is adopted out. None are put down to make room for others. They remain—not for a season, but for the length of their days.
There are no open doors to the public, no easy exits or convenient farewells.
The workers, led by Leo Grillo, venture into the wilderness and retrieve what is nearly lost. They return bearing lives often clinging to hope by a thread.
And then—they begin again.
There is a hospital here. There are kitchens. It is a place where nothing is sold, and little is wasted. Where the forgotten are remembered. Where the smallest among us—the voiceless, limping, scarred—are at last heard, and held.
It is peculiar that perched atop a barren mountain in Acton, California, where those wounded in limb and broken in spirit are not discarded, but cherished.
They are not counted by their usefulness, youth, or pedigree. They are counted by their need. And once counted, they are never cast away.
Ironically, thanks to the FBI and their partnership with a criminal, Grillo’s legacy of saving animals is to be cast away while he sits without bail in a federal detention cell.
The Man Who Preyed on the Elderly
James ClarkThe case against Grillo rests on one witness: James Clark of Phoenix, Arizona, operator of Midas Gold Group LLC, a precious metals IRA business that went into bankruptcy in June 2024.
Clark’s creditors are retirees who lost their savings when the company failed. Claims total $3.35 million. Clark is under federal investigation for fraud.
The FBI affidavit against Grillo discloses this in a footnote: Clark is cooperating with law enforcement “in hopes of receiving favorable consideration” on his own case.
Clark’s business was preying on older adults’ financial anxiety. He found Grillo at 77, and did it again.
What Clark Found
In November 2024, a Los Angeles jury awarded $6.7 million to Adriana Duarte Valentines, a former DELTA employee, for wrongful termination. What the jury never heard — Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kristin S. Escalante barred it — was that Duarte entered the United States illegally, and used a fake Social Security number to get the job at DELTA,.
According to a forensic audit, during the two and a half years Duarte worked there, she stole $339,071 in animal food and supplies. It later came out through coworkers that shes sold the goods at weekend swap meets.
What the jury did hear was Grillo’s deposition footage, played approximately 50 times on a 47-inch screen — clips of him calling Duarte a “lettuce picker,” stripped of the context that she herself gave him to explain her lack of work history.
She told Grillo that she had been a lettuce picker before coming to work at DELTA cleaning the catteries.
The jury awarded Duarte $16,000 in lost wages and $6.6 million for emotional distress for her loss of a $15 per hour job cleaning the catteries.
Duarte cried on the stand and claimed her whole life was the cats, and losing the job unfairly broke her spirit forever.
It was the combination of a biased judge and an emotional jury. Conbined they delivered what is called a nuclear verdict.
It all came down to what Judge Escalante allowed and did not allow as evidence in her courtroom. She would not even allow the jury to hear that DELTA was a not-for-profit because that might prejudice the jury, she said.
The jury thought Grillo was some rich man depriving a legal, sympathetic, honest woman from the cats she loved so well.
Duarte’s husband, Raul Lopez, was not so enamored. He liked the extra money Duarte got from stealing but he was a jealous man.
When he learned what his wife had been doing in the trailer near the horse stables, he found Jorge Avalos and ran him out of Acton. Avalos drove south and did not stop until he reached Mexico, where he remained.
The pregnancy was not by the husband, but Avalos, now of Mexico, formerly of a trailer in Acton. No one raised the matter in court. That the real reason Duarte was fired was she billed for hours spent in the lover’s trailer, not with the cats she loved.
Duarte lost her job, her lover, and whatever income she had been carrying out of the sanctuary in the bed of her truck.
Whether that weighed more heavily on her spirit than the loss of cleaning the litter boxes in the DELTA catteries, the jury never got to weigh.
Judge Escalante decided that might prejudice the jury in DELTA’s favor.
Judge Escalante later reduced the $6.7 million to $2.9 million. Still too much, and DELTA had to file for bankruptcy. The verdict was under appeal when someone as equally sinister as Duarte next appeared.
What Clark Did
The fraudster James Clark was in trouble. The FBI were aware of his gold fraud. But he was an affable con man when he needed to be,
He could charm gullible old ladies and gullible FBI agents with equal ease.
He wanted to weasel out. He proposed finding them other criminals, be an informant. He needed to produce a criminal to turn over to the FBI and the agents with their lower standards said yes. We can’t promise anything but you might just get your arse out of trouble if the conviction is the right kind of headline-grabber.
That’s how they roll at the FBI.
Set up somebody else, a bigger crime, something dramatic and the FBI will go easy on defrauding old people out of their savings by lying to them about gold that never was.
Clark knew Grillo and knew about DELTA’s troubles.
He flew from Arizona to California. Clark spoke of Mexico connections.
Clark said he would solve DELTA’s problems. He’d get Duarte to Mexico.
Grillo said she must go willingly. Clark tells it differently, and funny, whenever Grillo supposedly said something incriminating, Clark either did not tape it, or his recorder happened to break.
All we have is Clark’s word.
FBI Blunders
The FBI spent months building this case. The two meetings where Grillo allegedly agreed to a kidnapping — December 2025 and January 7, 2026 — were not recorded. The third meeting – which lasted two and half hours – was supposed to be recorded. The recording device failed after 30 minutes.
On March 3, they decided to video it.
Clark showed Grillo a photograph on his phone. Federal agents and Clark fabricated the photograph. It showed a woman, purportedly Duarte, bound with zip ties and duct tape.
Grillo knew it was a fake. He believed Clark was running a con.
Wouldn’t you know it, the video failed.
Clark is a big man, muscular, and erratic. He demanded money. He said Mexican police had Duarte in California. He needed money to get her to Mexico
Grillo, intimidated by this seemingly desperate man, wrote a $10,000 check against Clark’s fake photograph. A check from a bank with a branch a mile away — a check he planned to stop payment on within minutes after getting the dangerous Mr. Clark out of his camper.
The FBI swarmed the camper and arrested Grillo.
The Man Who Testified Against His Own Father
So here is James Clark, the witness. He was always willing to bear false witness. Once before, he testified against his own father, which resulted in his father’s conviction for white-collar fraud. But James get out of any mess.
That was in 2012.
Ths was 2026 and the FBI was ushering Clark directly to prison for defrauding senior citizens. Clark had to trade places with somebody else.
Grillo would do.
Defense
Leo Grillo has no criminal record. No violence. Just saving 10,000 animals. His defense is entrapment.
The government’s case is Clark’s word.
When 1000 dogs get euthanized for the lies of James Clark, because no one is going to adopt them – because the FBI adopted James Clark, because the money is running out while Grillo, who did all the fund raising, remains in a Los Angeles jail, someone is going to look into this case and see that they based it on lies.
Then there will be a real investigation.
It is one thing to destroy an old man or bilk seniors out of their life savings. But to kill 1000 dogs, people might just get upset about that.
Remember, you heard it here first.
