THE SETUP

Leo Grillo, 77, had run DELTA Rescue, the world’s largest no-kill, care-for-life animal sanctuary in Acton, California, for 47 years. He stopped when the FBI arrested him on March 3.

There are 1,500 animals on the ridge—cats, horses, and dogs rescued from the wild. DELTA is now being run by relatives and its employees, without its leader and sole fundraiser.

Grillo, the pioneer of the no-kill movement, has no criminal record.

He is in federal detention at the Los Angeles Detention Center, held without bail.

The US Attorney for the Central District of California says Grillo agreed to have a former DELTA employee taken and flown to Mexico, an attempted kidnapping. He faces up to 20 years. 

The case is dependent on a cooperator, James D. Clark of Phoenix. Clark was a gold dealer who got caught swindling 118 people, whom he persuaded to invest a total of $6 million in gold as part of their retirement plans. He never delivered the gold.

The FBI investigated him for fraud. Faced with the possibility of prison, Clark sought a story that might help him get leniency. He found Leo Grillo.

Who Did Clark Say He Was Going to Kidnap?

Adriana Duarte Valentines had worked for DELTA, feeding the cats and cleaning their litter boxes. Grillo fired her after catching her stealing food and supplies.

She sued for wrongful termination. 

In November 2024, a jury awarded her $200,000 for documented economic loss, $5.5 million for emotional damages, and $1 million in punitive damages, for a total of $6.7 million for the loss of a $15-an-hour job.

The judge reduced the verdict to $2.9 million, still a lot of money for a minimum-wage worker, especially when taken from a place built on saving animals no one else wanted.

Duarte’s deposition revealed she entered the country illegally and used a false Social Security number to get the job. Internal documents, former staff, and testimony from her husband showed that she stole about $339,000 from DELTA over 2.5 years, which may have been why she loved the job.

Another reason for her tears at trial, though the jury never knew, was that a coworker at DELTA got her pregnant. Their relationship ended with her firing, along with her husband discovering the affair and her pregnancy.

Jury selection yielded a panel of 10 women and 2 men. Eight of the women were Mexican-American. Plaintiff’s counsel used peremptory challenges to remove male jurors during voir dire. Defense objections to the strikes were overruled by Judge Escalante.

Grillo said he fired her because she stole. Duarte said he fired her because he was prejudiced against her because she was Mexican, pregnant, and a woman.

The jury believed her.  It helped that the judge excluded evidence about her affair and how she would bill DELTA for overtime while she spent hours in the camper with her lover. The judge also excluded any mention to the jury that DELTA was a not-for-profit.

Judge Kristin Escalante ruled it might prejudice the jury in Grillo’s favor.

After the verdict, DELTA filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which slowed the collection process. Grillo was about to appeal, which would further delay it.

Pesos Anyone?

Clark, already in trouble, and stapped for cash, began with a peso scam.  Clark, a so-called expert on international money and the use of gold as a hedge against a falling dollar, advised Grillo that the dollar was about to weaken significantly. He advised investing in pesos.

Grillo gave Clark $60,000 in US currency. Clark returned with a huge stack of pesos, which he represented as the full $60,000. Grillo later calculated the total. Clark had shorted him $35,000. 

Clark promised to pay it back. He represented that he was a filmmaker. Grillo said he could work it off by helping him to make a documentary film to be called My Dog Is Not Candy. It was to be about Mars Candy buying up veterinary clinics and raising the prices for animal care.

On January 10, 2026, Grillo presented Clark with a contract. The terms were $50,000, with reimbursable expenses capped at another $50,000. Delivery was due January 10, 2027.  Clark cashed the $50,000 check. The documentary work never commenced. 

The government’s probable cause arrest affidavit— the basis for the attempted kidnapping charge—makes no reference to that $50,000 payment or the pesos scam.

Two Audiences

Clark had a senior citizen, as gullible as any of the 118 seniors planning their retirement around gold that Clark promised but never delivered. Clark decided to give the FBI a story that would help reduce, or even eliminate prison time for crimes against people he had swindled out of $6 million.

Clark began story telling. He told Grillo he had connections in Mexico — powerful lawyers, business contacts, a money exchange, a limousine operation, and a house there. To Grillo, he said everything would be legal. He would persuade Duarte to voluntarily go to Mexico. There, he said his powerful lawyers could approach Duarte and leverage her legal exposure.

Duarte had entered the country illegally, used a fabricated Social Security number, never filed a tax return, and had stolen $339,000 from the sanctuary. All of this made her legally exposed in both countries, Clark said.

The Plan 

A Mexican lawyer would approach Duarte and explain that her immigration and tax exposure made staying in the U.S. and pursuing the $$2.9 million verdict put her at risk. Duarte would be invited to come to Mexico voluntarily, and as Clark described it, stay at going to a “resort” where a Mexican lawyer would explain to her that she could get $1 million.

Clark proposed having men physically grab Duarte. 

According to the FBI affidavit, Grillo said no. She had to go “willingly.”

Over the months, Clark kept updating Grillo — the location had changed. Drug wars made certain areas unavailable. The logistics were shifting. 

While Clark was telling Grillo one story, he was telling the FBI that Grillo had hired him for a kidnapping for ransom. 

The question naturally occurs: Why would the FBI want to participate in the entrapment of Grillo?

A fraud case against a bankrupt gold dealer is a long road to a small headline. A kidnapping case against the founder of a famous animal sanctuary is on the front page. The Bureau took the trade.

The Four Meetings

The FBI lists four meetings between Clark and Grillo. Two of them were not recorded. In the third meeting, the equipment failed after 30 minutes into a two-and-a-half-hour session.

The FBI is the agency that built Pegasus surveillance into routine investigative practice. They wire informants. They run live audio feeds to surveillance vans. They have phones. They have agents trained to capture evidence. In a months-long operation against a 77-year-old animal sanctuary founder, the agency’s primary recording equipment failed after 30 minutes, and no agent on the surveillance team made a backup recording during the next two hours of conversation they were actively monitoring.

In the fourth, the one that mattered most, the video equipment failed completely.

The story must be told by memory, by notes, by people who have reasons to remember things a certain way.

The first meeting was in December 2025. Clark flew in from Arizona. He met Grillo at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank. There is no recording. What happened there exists in the memory of Clark, who happens to need that memory very much.

The second meeting was on January 7, 2026. Clark told the FBI that Grillo proposed kidnapping Duarte and her child and offered $100,000.

There is no recording of the conversation—no audio, no video—only Clark’s account of what was said.

This meeting took place during the same week Grillo formalized the documentary agreement with Clark, offering him a contract paying $50,000 for legitimate work.

The five-digit number Clark says Grillo gave him at the first meeting — verified as Duarte’s home address — exists in evidence only because Clark said it did. The $100,000 kidnapping proposal Clark says Grillo made at the second meeting exists only because Clark said it did. 

The third meeting was on February 13, 2026. It lasted 2.5 hours. The recording failed after thirty minutes. 

On February 19, Clark received a $20,000 check from Grillo.

The memo line says “Production,” which makes sense if you believe Clark was making a film. 

The government alleges this was not a payment for a documentary but a partial payment for a kidnapping.

On February 24, 2026, Clark called Grillo from the FBI office in Phoenix on a phone they gave him. He reached Grillo on Telegram, an encrypted messaging platform. The call was quick, a scripted performance delivered over an encrypted line.

He said Duarte and her husband would go to the airport willingly, then said, “and at that point they are going whether they want to or not.”

Grillo responded: “Alrighty, we are good.”

Then he immediately called back and said the call worried him — that “if anyone picked that up it puts me right in the middle of it.”

The government points to the four words: Alrighty. We are good.

Grillo has Auditory Processing Disorder. It makes speech hard to follow, especially on the phone and under stress. The call was fast and scripted. It came over an encrypted line he did not know.

The legal question is: do those four words reflect knowing participation in a criminal agreement, or do they represent a reflexive response shaped by confusion and misinterpretation?

A jury will decide whether they were a conscious step into a crime, or a human moment of not quite understanding what was happening.

March 3

The fourth meeting was on March 3, 2026. It was early, 7:30 a.m. Clark said it was urgent, which was another way of saying something unpleasant was about to happen.

Clark stood six feet three, ex-military, and erratic. Grillo came armed with two small .38s and $1,000 in hundreds. If the meeting turned into a robbery, he would have something to hand over immediately.

Clark came and got into the camper van. He showed a photo on his phone. A woman with duct tape over her mouth. A large man was behind her. The photograph, however, was not what it appeared to be. It had been created by federal agents—a staged image introduced into the encounter as part of the operation.

Grillo had used Photoshop for years. He saw that the image was fake. The man – supposedly Duarte’s husband – was large. Duarte’s husband was not.

Clark said Duarte and her husband were being held in Lancaster by Mexican police, not kidnappers.

From Grillo’s perspective, the situation was framed not as a criminal abduction but as a legal maneuver involving Mexican authorities and attorneys. He never agreed to anything that would take a person against her will, because that was not the story he thought he was part of.

Now, Clark said Mexican police were working in Lancaster, CA. That was new. It was not what Grillo had been told.

Grillo said, “They’re holding them in Lancaster? Oh my God. Their sons are in their twenties; they can call ‘Sheriff.’”

His response raises a central question—whether he was responding to a perceived lawful situation gone wrong, rather than endorsing an unlawful one.

Sources say he thought federal agents were coming for Clark. He thought it was an immigration case for Duarte. He knew people in ICE. He thought he could call and explain it.

Instead of a plan coming together, it felt like something falling apart—a frightened older man discovering that what he thought was legal has taken a turn into something else.

Clark asked for ten thousand. A frightened Grillo wrote a check. It was from a U.S. Bank close by. The memo said “Doc Invest.” He meant to drive there and stop payment in minutes. 

Clark took the check and stepped out. The FBI came in. They arrested Grillo. They found his two guns, one on each side.

What the Bureau Has Become

There was a time when the FBI was the agency that went after the men who preyed on the weak. Bank robbers. Kidnappers. Confidence men who emptied the savings accounts of widows and the elderly.

In the matter of Leo Grillo, the Bureau took one of those men — a thief whose specialty was the elderly’s retirement savings, a man whose own fraud file was open on a desk in the same Bureau — and put him to work. They gave him a burner phone. They gave him an encrypted app. They gave him a fabricated photograph. They gave him a field office to call from and a script to read.

They pointed him at a 77-year-old man with a heart condition, no criminal record, and 1500 animals depending on him.

Justice did not require this prosecution. 

Clark was already a federal target. The retirees he defrauded were already true victims. Nothing in the public interest was served by trading that case for a new one, manufactured against an old man on the word of the man who manufactured it.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was founded to protect Americans from men like James Clark. In the matter of Leo Grillo, it hired one instead.

The animals on the ridge in Acton do not know any of this. They wait, as animals do, for the man who promised them safety to come home.

He may not.

That is what the Bureau has become.

That is what justice has become in this case.

ARTVOICE ART ​