SAN DIEGO
Two animal rights activists are accused of driving 40,000 miles to release thousands of mink from farms in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and elsewhere, officials said today.
The FBI today arrested Joseph Buddenberg, 31, and Nicole Kissane, 28, and charged the two with terrorizing the fur industry during cross-country road trips in which they released thousands of mink from farms around the country and vandalized various properties, according to authorities.
The defendants are charged under the Conspiracy to Violate the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.
They were arrested in Oakland Friday morning by agents.
“Whatever your feelings about the fur industry, there are legal ways to make your opinions known,” said U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy. “The conduct alleged here, sneaking around at night, stealing property and vandalizing homes and businesses with acid, glue, and chemicals, is a form of domestic terrorism and can’t be permitted to continue.”
According to a federal grand jury indictment unsealed today, Buddenberg and Kissane caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage during the nationwide spree in the summer of 2013.
The indictment alleges that the pair snuck onto farms and freed minks and destroyed breeding records in Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania during multiple trips, and in one case they released a bobcat from a farm in Montana, officials said.
In one instance the defendants traveled from Oregon to San Diego in their 2012 Honda Fit on July 15, 2013 and used paint, paint stripper, a super glue-type substance, butyric acid, muriatic acid and glass etchant to vandalize Furs by Graf, a retail furrier located in San Diego, as well as the Spring Valley and La Mesa residences and personal property of the current and former owners of the business.
To publicize their crimes, the defendants drafted “communiqués” describing their conduct and posted them on websites associated with animal rights extremists, the indictment said.
Among some of the incidents of vandalism cited in the indictment: The defendants slashed tires of a meat distributor’s truck in San Francisco; smashed windows and glued the door locks at a furrier business in Minneapolis, Minnesota; vandalized and attempted to flood the Sun Prairie, Wisconsin home of an employee of the North American Fur Auctions.
The unemployed defendants sold items on eBay and Amazon to finance their trips.
To avoid detection by law enforcement, the defendants withdrew large sums of cash from their bank accounts immediately before setting off on a road trip, the indictment alleges.
During the trips, the indictment states that they largely avoided the use of phones, used only cash for purchases and stopped logging in to known online accounts and e-mail. Instead, they used public Internet computers and encrypted e-mail.
Once they returned from the trips, they resumed normal use of phones and computers and no longer relied solely on cash to make purchases, the indictment states.
If convicted, Buddenberg and Kissane face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
