It sounds like a scene out of the Ocean’s series of heist movies. Only this one didn’t happen in Las Vegas, but at a Mexican university campus surrounded by lush tropical vegetation. And it wasn’t about taking on a casino, but stealing valuable turtles. Armando Escobedo Galván, a biologist at Centro Universitario de la Costa (CUC) in Puerto Vallarta, on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, says he’s still startled about how the thieves tricked him last December. “Two people arrived at my office,” he recounts, “wearing uniforms of the environmental prosecutor’s office,” a federal agency known as PROFEPA. They said they were there for an inspection of his turtle program, asked for his permits, and cited corresponding laws. Everything during the two-hour procedure seemed completely normal. Then they asked to see the laboratory where the turtles were kept for scientific research: a climate-controlled container, secured with a padlock. That’s when the problems began. The officials criticized the way the turtles were being kept and complained about missing permits. Escobedo Galván says he started feeling stressed. They threatened to punish him, he says, so he was relieved when they offered instead to take 40 of the 100 turtles into their “protection” while he sorted out the necessary paperwork. “We’ll bring them back when everything is in order,” Escobedo Galván recalls them telling him. “That was a psychological masterpiece,” he says. “They put me under pressure and then offered a solution.” Measuring only 10 centimeters (4 inches) in length, the Vallarta mud turtle is…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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