Fighting the Dog-Fighters with The Animal Welfare Investigations Project

‘Dogs don't do this naturally… They are trained, by men who smile, encourage and place bets, as their animals tear themselves apart.’ - Tom Symonds, BBC Home Affairs 

Some dog fighting victims are kept separate from other dogs all their lives. They spend their days on short, heavyweight chains, mistreated until they become filled with enough fear and rage to attack the first animal they see. 

Others will be trained relentlessly by handlers that they believe ‘love’ them, run for hours on treadmills, pumped full of human-grade anabolic steroids and narcotics. Some victims will be mutilated as puppies, undergoing amateur surgeries like ear-cropping, tail-docking and even sharpening teeth. Or they might have been found on the street, and too small to fight back, they’re picked up as disposable ‘bait’.

Whichever way they get there, these dogs’ journeys all lead to the same place: a basement pit between 14 and 20 feet square, made of plywood, hay bales or chain link, with sawdust or old carpet for a floor.

Here, the victims will be weighed, washed and examined; not out of care, but in case toxic substances have been rubbed into their fur. Then they’ll be released from opposite corners - in the middle, they’ll fight for as long as several hours. They’ll fight through puncture wounds, bruises, lacerations, blood loss, crushing injuries, amputations, broken bones. They’re not always so lucky that it’ll be to the death, but many will succumb to their injuries. If survivors are not big winners or valuable bloodlines, they’ll be thrown away, or left, untreated, to die.

For many victims, the suffering will only end after a defeat that ‘embarasses’ the reputation or status of their handler. Then, they’ll be executed as particularly brutal ‘entertainment’ - drowned, strangled, hanged, shot or even electrocuted - often by the person they’ve depended on all their short lives.

‘The attraction lies in using the animals as an extension of themselves, to fight their battles for them and to demonstrate their strength and prowess… For others, the appeal simply seems to come from the sadistic enjoyment of a brutal spectacle.’ - [Source: ASPCA]

It’s not only unthinkably cruel, but also extremely illegal, banned in most EU countries and all 50 states. Yet even recent headlines prove this bloodsport still goes on.

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Why? Because dogs fighting is big money. 

The US government offers a $5000 reward to report fights, but a raid on a major US ring can yield up to $500k in assets. Gamblers will bet up to $30k a fight. Almost 40,000 Americans participate a year, which means millions upon millions will change hands - as over 16,000 dogs die.

Where before, dog fighting enthusiasts had to physically attend fights or distribute underground magazines, the advent of social media has changed the criminal model. People are watching fights live-streamed online, discussing their crimes on messaging apps, or looking on social media for local fights. This means modern dog fighting leaves a potent trail of digital ‘pawprints’ for intrepid OSINT investigators to sniff out - presenting a revolutionary new path to saving lives. 

‘I prosecute a lot of drug dealers. And I’m not saying that they’re all good people, but a lot of them are good people that just do bad things… Dog fighting for me is something totally different.’ - Jane Taylor, Criminal Division Chief of the US Attorney's Office District of South Carolina [Source: CNN]

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Meet Emma*

Emma*, a non-profit worker with the Animal Welfare Investigations Project (AWIP), reached out to us at OSINT Industries. 

AWIP is an organization dedicated to ending organized animal cruelty. 

Following previous success in the Far East for a wildlife-tracking NGO, Emma now lends her investigative talents to fighting dog fighters across the world - using OSINT Industries services. Emma wanted to share how our platform enables her to rescue the vulnerable animals caught up in these illegal enterprises. Her work demonstrated that OSINT is saving lives.

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From Likes to Fights

Investigators like Emma know which ‘pawprints’ to look for online. Like all OSINT leads, the trails left by the criminals who run dog-fighting rings in plain sight. A social media or messaging group that centers around abusing dogs will stand out for a jumble of acronyms the average reader won’t understand. When matched with context, hese seemingly random letters tell a story of pain. 

‘'Ch' is used in Kennel club Circles, but… Ch' next to a large muscled dog with a chain and facial injuries will always be dogfighting.’ - Mark Randell, Hidden-In-Sight Investigator [Source: ASPCA]

A dog might be a ‘Gr Ch’, meaning a five-time fight survivor or Grand Champion; he or she might be a ‘Ch’, a Champion who has survived three trips to these animals’ personal hell. It’s a twisted mirror of the terminology that flies around at a dog show.

A ‘hot’ lead on social media may also be more overt, like those listed in a Virginia-based indictment from 2022: using Facebook to set up matches for his dog ‘Durantula’, a dog fighter described his victim’s most recent fight as ‘another DOA’, a ‘15 mins chest & gut kill.’ Another Michigan-based animal abuser, in 2018, used WhatsApp to share dog-fight videos featuring his victim ‘Barracuda’, described as a ‘straight finisher throat and kidneys!!!’.

‘[It’s] a machismo mentality… For them, tough dogs are a symbol of manhood... and by winning, the dogs build up their owners' ego.’ - Sociologist Rhonda Evans, University of Louisiana at Lafayette [Source: Archive]

OSINT Industries is currently helping Emma to disrupt the growing phenomenon of dog fighting rings in the Southern United States. This operation relies on tip-offs and social media leads like these, piecing together language in context and navigating often complex networks of confusing aliases. These posts are often visceral. They’ll reveal the names of victims as their abusers boast about what they’ve forced these dogs to become - but details on the criminals themselves are vague.

This is where OSINT comes in.

During her operation, a tip-off provided Emma with a Facebook profile of an individual believed to be involved in dog fighting: openly participating in bloodsport communities online. Unfortunately, like many others, this profile was only using a first name. Without our platform, it would be difficult for Emma to determine any specific information - the lead would rarely develop from here. However, the Facebook profile had given Emma an email address.

Putting this email address into OSINT Industries provided Emma with links to further social media accounts. These were corroborated by pictures of the suspect - and provided his full name. This was a perfect catch-and-kill. But Emma wasn’t done yet. OSINT Industries helped provide her with a PayPal account using the same email address, the final piece needed to build a case.

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Online Clues, Offline Violence

Victims used as ‘competitors’ are only half of the animals scarred by dog-fighting rings. In order to increase aggressiveness, ‘bait’ animals are often used to desensitise dogs to harming other creatures. These ‘bait’ animals - as statistics don’t exist to verify media claims of gangs stealing pets - are mostly sourced from online advertisements: ‘Adoption Needed’, or ‘Free to a Good Home’. 

They go to the opposite of a good home; these animals will be mauled or killed. The US National Humane Society has compiled reports of the suffering ‘bait’ animals will endure. Puppies, kittens and small animals like rabbits are already defenceless enough; to render bigger dogs helpless, their muzzles will be wrapped with duct tape or their teeth ground down to the gums.

Dog-fighters can expose details to OSINT investigators like Emma in a number of ways. One is their responses to these advertisements as they source ‘bait’ victims. Another is links to criminal groups. Where dog-fighting takes place, other criminal activity like illegal gambling, drug trafficking and even murder is often close-by - including connection to gang crimes. Some police departments report that narcotics and firearms are found in every anti-dog-fighting operation they undertake.

This level of criminality and abuse leaves a trace.

After another tip-off, Emma received an email address for a dog fighting suspect. This time, the suspect had confirmed links with known rings, but with this email address as the only available data, finding details was proving challenging; building a case was proving impossible. This suspect was using an alias on social media, as usual. Like gang members, players in dog fighting rings pick nicknames to sound as intimidating as possible: a recent UK conviction featured ‘Dr Death’.

Emma put the email address she had through OSINT Industries search. This provided her with multiple accounts all using the same alias - an OSINT win, confirming her suspect’s identity. What’s more, OSINT Industries search pulled up a phone number connected to one of the aliased accounts. Emma followed this to a physical address, and on to a government name. 

OSINT Industries, again, was integral in building a case. It was time to save more animals from a life of torture, and hand their abusers to the authorities. 

"Dogfighting is more than just a crime. It’s a deep, persistent stain on our national character that, despite being illegal in every state, still disgraces our culture with a shockingly wide diversity of locations, participants and onlookers." – Matt Bershadker, ASPCA President & CEO [Source: ASPCA]

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Going Forward with #OSINT4Good

After detailing the success of these two investigations thanks to our platform, Emma told us that she uses OSINT Industries as soon as she receives any email address or phone number from now on. Due to the ease of using our tool and the value of the information it provides, OSINT Industries has become indispensable in her work to end the abuse of vulnerable animals.

Emma says that although data is always hard to find, OSINT Industries provides the vital ‘crumbs’ of information that are often critical when it comes to following tip-offs and exposing serious criminals. Our platform is often what turns a lead from ‘cold’ to ‘hot’.

Going forward, the AWIP has been involved in our OSINT Training for law enforcement, helping us deliver coaching on OSINT techniques to replicate Emma’s success for animals worldwide.

The AWIP’s good work goes on. In the Philippines, the AWIP has secured several arrests for animal abuse, and work against the illegal dog-meat trade has led to the rescue of many traumatised dogs. Meanwhile, the AWIP has been instrumental in saving abused breeding dogs from mistreatment, particularly in Poland.

Animals are often the most vulnerable in our society. Research shows that protecting them could be our first defence against violence in our communities, key to making our world a less brutal place. 

‘Even seasoned law enforcement agents are consistently appalled by the atrocities that they encounter before, during, and after dog fights, yet the children in those communities are routinely exposed to the unfathomable violence… and become conditioned to believe that the violence is normal. Those children are systematically desensitized to the suffering, and ultimately become criminalized.’ - Animal Legal and Historical Center, Michigan State University College of Law [Source: AnimalLaw]

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For further information on the AWIP’s work, visit the following:

https://awip.org.uk

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/awiporguk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/awiporguk/

To support work like Emma’s, the AWIP welcomes donations here:

https://donorbox.org/join-awip