Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Robbed The ZOO // The Aquinas Kasbar Story

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

Aquinas Kasbar broke into the Santa Ana Zoo after hours using bolt cutters to steal an endangered animal to keep as a pet. While his actions inadvertently allowed several lemurs and capuchin monkeys to escape, Kasbar made off with Isaac, a 32-year-old ring-tailed lemur recognized as the oldest of his species in North American captivity. After placing Isaac in an unventilated plastic bin, Kasbar ultimately abandoned the animal outside a Marriott hotel the next morning with a note requesting its safe return to the zoo.

So why did this guy go to a zoo and steal a whole ass endangered species? Now the guy's name is Quinn, and Quinn is 18 when this story starts, and he's a high school student in Newport Beach, California. But Quinn has a big problem. He loves gambling. He's apparently way into hitting up the local casinos and playing blackjack. And at one point, around 2018, he finally wins big. $12,000.

And this win changes his life. Not because he's suddenly gained all that money, but because now he's addicted. And he's not going to stop trying to win big again. So he keeps gambling more and more. And over time, he loses all his money and now he's in a lot of debt. So he has to come up with a scheme to get himself out of that debt. And he decides he's going to go to wealthy neighborhoods, break into houses, steal whatever he can find and then pawn all the stuff he stole. So one day he heads to Balboa Island, which is a nice

neighborhood in Newport Beach, and he finds a house and he breaks in and he grabs anything valuable he can find. Jewelry, rings, watches, expensive jackets, bags, whatever. Then he leaves. Later, he takes some of the jewelry to a pawn shop and he pawns it and he walks away with a couple thousand dollars. Then he does it all over again. He finds another house. He finds another house. breaks in and steals whatever he can. Then he does it again and again and again, hitting house after house, neighborhood after neighborhood, until he's robbed 28 different houses and stolen $700,000 worth of items. Now, when you pawn something, you only get a fraction of what it's worth, so he didn't make $700,000 from all this theft. He probably made like 20% of that. Anyway, three months go by,

and he's still out here robbing houses. But then, around this time, he gets a crazy idea. For some reason, he suddenly wants a pet. But not just any pet, he wants a pet monkey. But in order to get one, he's going to have to steal it from a local zoo. So one night, after hours, he goes to the Santa Ana Zoo, and he climbs over the park's perimeter fence, and he wanders around inside until he finds the outdoor monkey enclosure.

And he has bolt cutters, so he uses them to cut right through the enclosure fence and he gets inside. Now, in this enclosure are eight capuchin monkeys. And these monkeys, they're not just going to let a strange person roll up into their cage and grab one of them. They want absolutely nothing to do with Quinn. And they start running and climbing and jumping around the place, and they're just too fast. And Quinn can't catch a single one. So he turns his attention to the connecting enclosure. and he cuts a hole in the side of it, and in that one, there are ring-tailed lemurs.

And apparently, lemurs aren't as fast as the monkeys, and they spend more of their time on the ground. So this one particular lemur catches Quinn's attention. His name is Isaac, and this is an actual picture of him. Now, Isaac is incredibly old. While lemurs typically live around 20 to 25 years, Isaac is 32 years old, making him the oldest lemur in North America. Ring-tailed lemurs are also an endangered species, by the way. So Quinn spots this elderly-ass endangered lemur, and I guess he isn't as fast as the others,

and Quinn is able to grab him and he puts him inside this plastic storage container that he brought with him. And then he leaves. And either right then or at some point during the night, about 10 animals total, monkeys and lemurs, escape the enclosures through the holes that Quinn cut. Anyway, Quinn takes Isaac home,

back to his parents' place, because he still lives with his parents. And he lets him out, and he starts playing with him, and he even takes some videos of himself playing with him. Then something kind of unexpected happens. Quinn starts getting buyer's remorse. And he doesn't know how to take care of a lemur, much less an elderly one. What do you even feed these things?

Now, we don't know why he suddenly got buyer's remorse. It's speculated that he got the belief that zoo animals have GPS trackers embedded in them somehow. And for the record, zoo animals do have a small microchip embedded under their skin for identification purposes, similar to what you would have your house cat get, but it doesn't have GPS tracking capabilities or anything like that. Regardless, either for this reason or some other reason, Quinn decides it's a bad idea to have this lemur and he needs to return it. Problem is, he can't exactly walk back into the Santa Ana Zoo and hand him over. That would definitely get him arrested.

So that same night, he puts Isaac back into the storage container, which has no ventilation holes, by the way, and he takes this container to a nearby hotel. And it's late and there's no one around, so he leaves the container outside at the front of the hotel, along with a note explaining that Isaac belongs to the zoo and that he needs to be returned. And he mentions that Isaac has a tracker, which again, zoo animals don't have GPS trackers on them. Anyway, then he leaves. Later, a hotel employee finds the container, and I'm sure he's like, Holy shit, is that an exotic animal? And the hotel calls the police. Meanwhile, back at the zoo, employees show up for work that morning,

and they immediately realize something is very wrong. Some of the enclosures have been breached, and there are monkeys and lemurs wondering about the zoo. Now, luckily, the employees are prepared for this. They get some red grapes, and they use them to lure the animals, the animals back into their cages. And when they do the head count, they realize that Isaac is missing. Later, they get a call from the police telling them that they have found Isaac stuffed in a container at a nearby hotel, but that he appears to be fine. So that's good. However, the police

have no idea who broke into the zoo and kidnapped him. And with no real evidence pointing to anyone, the case of the lemur heist eventually goes cold, and Quinn gets away with it. And the guy still needs money, because he's still in debt from all that gambling. So he goes right back to doing what he was doing before, breaking into houses, stealing shit, and paunting it. And several more months go by. And by this point, police have long been investigating all these home burglaries in the area. And one day, they get a break in the case.

They're finally able to trace a diamond ring that Quinn stole back to a local pawn shop. And so they have the shop owner check his sales records and he sees that the ring was pawned by Quinn. And so police start looking into him. And that is when they discover that he had sold more than $52,000 worth of stolen jewelry to pawn shops around the area. And so eventually, police track him down and bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. Now, this arrest is just for the burglaries. I mean, police still have no idea that he's the one who stole the lemur from the zoo.

Until. While he's incarcerated, waiting for his trial, a bail bondsman is brought in to discuss the terms of arranging his potential release. And for some reason, Quinn starts bragging about past crimes that he committed, and he tells the bondsman about how he once stole a lemur from a zoo. zoo and how he eventually returned it without getting caught. And to prove his story, he pulls out his cell phone and he physically plays the video showing himself inside his room with the stolen lemur. And the bondsman is like, holy shit! And he reports all this to the police. And so Quinn gets charged with that as well. And ultimately, he ends up taking a plea deal and he gets sentenced to 12 years, eight months for the burglaries, and he receives another three months for stealing

and endangered species.