Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Made $70 Million in Prison // The Codfather Story

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Carlos Rafael, known as "The Codfather," built a massive, vertically integrated commercial fishing empire in New Bedford, Massachusetts, eventually controlling over 25 percent of the region���s groundfish revenue. For decades, Rafael circumvented strict federal overfishing regulations through a prolific fraud scheme known as "painting fish," where his business intentionally misreported hundreds of thousands of pounds of restricted, high-value species like cod and sole as abundant, low-value haddock.

Would you spend four years in prison for $70 million? So they call this guy the Codfather, and the Codfather is about 28 years old when this all begins, and he's living in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Codfather, he's a pretty shady guy. Like, he likes money, and he really doesn't seem to like the government. So one day, in 1980, he starts his own business, a seafood supply and distribution company.

Basically, other companies catch the fish, and his company takes it from, them and distributes it to the markets to sell. Cool, that's a legitimate business, and he starts making a bit of money from it. Except that Codfather, it's kind of a greedy dude, and he decides he's not going to pay taxes on all this money he's making. Instead, he just reinvests it back into his company, and his company grows even bigger. And about four years go by. And of course, the IRS discovers that Codfather isn't paying his taxes. And bam, he gets arrested. And he gets convicted of tax evasion and he spends about four and a half months in federal

prison. Now at this point, a normal person would probably start following the law and paying the taxes he owes every year. But even after going to prison, Codfather is still like, no, I ain't paying taxes. So while he's making payments to the IRS for previous taxes he owes, his seafood distribution business is still running and it's still making new money and he keeps not paying taxes on a lot of that new money. So over the next few decades, Codfather's seafood business explodes. At his peak, he's processing over 22 million pounds of fish per year. He also starts buying up commercial fishing boats in the area so that his company can be the one who catches the fish too. And before long, he becomes a dominant force in the New Bedford fishing industry, and his

company controls 80% of the entire local groundfish sector. In fact, his business grows so big that that's when people in the area start calling him the codfather. So it's now 2007, and codfather, he's around 55 years old. And his fishing and seafood empire is still huge, and it's still going strong. But then, something terrible happens. The NOAA, the federal agency in charge of protecting the oceans, they decide to establish strict annual catch limits, which means that Codfather and his company need to slow down on all the seafood they're catching. But Codfather, he isn't one to let the government tell him what to do. So he starts overfishing and bringing back undersized fish that are supposed to be thrown back,

keeping egg-bearing lobsters that are supposed to be thrown back, and even hiding illegal catches in secret coolers on some of his boats. And at least one time when NOAA inspectors or Coast Guard try to board his boats, Codfather has his crew sink the net to hide the evidence. He also stops reporting some fishing trips to the government altogether, and he lies about what his boats are actually catching. And the thing is, while he's out here doing all of this, the fishermen who are actually following the rules are barely scraping by. Some of them are losing their boats because the quotas are so tight.

But Codfather, he doesn't seem to care. He's getting rich off of all this seafood while everyone else is going under. Now, to be fair, he's not completely getting away with it. Over the years, Codfather racks up more than 30 federal fishing violations and over half a million dollars in fines. But these aren't violations that could get him thrown in prison or anything. But then, around 2012, he and his crew are pulling off a new scheme. You see, certain fish like Cod and Seoul are protected by quotas. But his crew just keeps catching them anyway.

And once they get back to port, he has his importance. change all the paperwork and relabel the protected fish as Haddock before the report gets sent off to the government. This dude is just shady. Now, most of this stuff he's doing are violations of government fish regulation, which like I was saying, I don't think most people go to prison for that. Usually just get a fine or whatever. But here's where the shit he's doing starts getting real illegal. When he sells a bunch of this fish to a wholesale fish dealer at the market in New York City, This New York fish dealer pays him directly with cash, instead of using checks or wire transfers or something like that that leaves a paper trail for the IRS to check.

And this fish dealer usually stuffs all that cash into a bunch of duffel bags and Codfather and his crew will put it in a truck and haul it all the way back to Massachusetts. So in one stretch of about six months, this fish dealer alone pays Codfather over 600,000 in cash. So now, Codfather is sitting on piles and piles of untaxed money. And he can't just go deposit it into the bank. That would leave a paper trail and he'd have to report all of it. So he comes up with yet another shady idea. He'll just smuggle a bunch of the money, all the way over to Portugal, where he's originally from. Now, to do this, he'll need the help of someone working at the local airport. So he hits up this corrupt sheriff's deputy who often works with an ICE task force,

and he has federal law enforcement credentials. Now because this guy has those federal law enforcement credentials, he has the ability to bypass TSA at the local Boston airport. And so Codfather gives this sheriff's deputy a bag filled with $17,500 in cash. And this guy uses his credentials to walk right past TSA screening checkpoints without the bag being inspected. Once he's past security, he gets on board a commercial flight and he flies all the way over to Portugal. And there, he deposits the cash into a bank account that Codfather has there. And this isn't the only time Codfather smuggles money. He finds other corrupt law enforcement officers and they do this over and over and over again. Because he has literally hundreds of

thousands of dollars to move. So it looks like now, Codfather is living his dream. His business is thriving and this dude is making more money than ever. Until. By early 2015, Codfather decides that he's ready to retire and he does an interview with a local newspaper where he announces that he's selling his fishing empire for $175 million. And he's going to take all that money and move to Cape Verde off the coast of Africa. And this interview, it catches the attention of the IRS. And the IRS is like $175 million fishing business? Because he had only been reporting a fraction of that money.

And so the IRS has two agents go undercover and dress up like wealthy Russian businessmen. And these fake Russians approach Codfather, and they pretend to be interested in buying his fishing empire from him. And Codfather completely buys this act, and he invites them into his office, and he shows these two dudes exactly how he's been evading taxes and money laundering and all the sort of illegal stuff that he's been doing. And so now the IRS has everything they need to bust Codfather. And in 2016, the feds raid his business and bam, he gets arrested. Here's a picture of him. And ultimately, he takes a plea deal and he gets sentenced to 46 months in prison. Not only that, but as part of a civil settlement, he's banned from the fishing business for life.

And he's forced to sell off his entire fishing empire. And he ends up finalizing the deals while he's sitting in prison. And so even after everything, he still walks away from all this with over $70 million from that sale. So he got almost four years in prison, but he made $70 million. I don't know. Do you think it's worth it?