The former actor Leo Grillo met the man in a camper at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank.
“They’ve got ‘em,” the man said. He showed Grillo a photo of a zip tied couple, duct tape over the woman’s mouth, according to a federal indictment.
But the plan had hit a snag, he said. The kidnappers needed another $10,000.
Unbeknownst to Grillo as he wrote out the check was that this was all part of an FBI sting.
Within seconds, agents arrested Grillo, 77, who once starred alongside Katherine Heigl in Zyzzyx Road, which has been dubbed the lowest-grossing studio movie in history. Grillo is charged in a criminal complaint with attempted kidnapping and, if convicted, faces up to 20 years years in prison.
Grillo’s appointed deputy federal public defender did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The complaint noted that Grillo denied to FBI agents that he’d paid for a kidnapping.
What drove Grillo to allegedly pay $30,000 toward a kidnapping plot was a civil lawsuit filed by a former employee of his animal sanctuary who said she’d been wrongfully terminated and discriminated against due to her pregnancy.
An L.A. County jury found in favor of the woman in November 2024, awarding her $6.7 million.
Instead of paying his former employee, federal authorities allege that Grillo hatched a plan to kidnap her and fly her to Mexico.
The lawsuit
Grillo is a well-known figure in the animal rescue world. He founded his non-profit wilderness animal rescue organization, Dedication and Everlasting Love to Animals, decades earlier. He previously told the Times his epiphany came during a road trip in 1979, when he rescued a stray black dog in apparent distress in the Angeles National Forest.
He named the dog “Delta” and, according to his website, that “was just the beginning of many more wilderness rescues to come.” That morphed into what the website described as the “largest no-kill, care for life animal sanctuary in the world.”
Grillo’s alleged intended victim, Adriana Duarte Valentines, began working as an animal caretaker at the sanctuary in June 2017.
The criminal complaint does not identify Duarte by name, referring only to a “Victim 1” who had sued Grillo’s animal sanctuary and obtained a $6.7 million judgement. The Times identified her through Los Angeles County court filings.
In her lawsuit, Duarte said she worked Sunday through Friday, helping feed the animals and clean their cages.
After having a baby in February 2020, Duarte said Grillo told her she had been replaced, “effectively terminating her,” according to the lawsuit, which she filed the following year.
“[Duarte] was left embarrassed, ashamed, emotionally broken, and in financial desperation for having been directly discriminated and retaliated against for having a pregnancy related disability, and needing and requesting a reasonable accommodation, despite outstanding and loyal service,” her lawsuit stated.
In a deposition, Grillo said he fired Duarte because he believed she was stealing cat and dog food, janitorial supplies and personal item — which she denied.
A jury found in favor of Duarte in November 2024, awarding her $5.7 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages. A judge later reduced the total amount to $2.9 million. The sanctuary filed for bankruptcy in May 2025.
In December, according to the criminal complaint, Grillo made a phone call.
A kidnapping plot
A man — identified in the complaint only as Cooperating Witness 1 — told FBI agents that Grillo, a former client, left him a voicemail discussing the recent lawsuit loss.
Grillo, he said, told him he was working on a few different “projects” and wanted the witness to work with him. The witness told agents Grillo was deeply concerned about possible surveillance and often talked in coded language.
The witness said he agreed to fly from his home in Arizona to meet with Grillo at the equestrian center that same month. Once there, he said Grillo had him write a five-digit number on a piece of paper that Grillo later said was the street number of Duarte’s address.
As the pair walked through the horse stables, Grillo brought up the civil lawsuit, which he felt was unfair and politically driven, according to the complaint.
Grillo allegedly asked the witness to use his contacts in Mexico to learn more about Duarte, who is a Mexican immigrant, and said he was willing to pay for the information.
According to the complaint, the men met a second time at the Burbank equestrian center on January 7. The witness said Grillo began speaking in “code,” referring to a “movie” or “documentary” that he wanted to make.
“GRILLO stated that in this “documentary,” he wanted the woman who had sued him to be kidnapped along with her young child and for them to be transported to Mexico and held against their will,” the FBI agent said in the affidavit. “While in confinement, the woman would be forced to cooperate with GRILLO regarding her lawsuit.”
Grillo allegedly told the witness he was willing to pay $100,000 to make that happen and said he wanted the woman and her child to be flown out of an airport in Lancaster.
The witness told authorities that Grillo said once Duarte was held in Mexico, he should do whatever was necessary to make her cooperate. Grillo was allegedly willing to make a down payment of $30,000 or $50,000 to effectuate the kidnapping plot.
Grillo allegedly wanted the kidnapping to go down before a settlement conference that was scheduled for the end of February or early March this year.
After that second meeting, on January 31, the witness reported the possible kidnapping plot to the FBI. According to the complaint, the witness is a target of a separate FBI investigation into alleged fraud and is working with authorities in hopes of receiving favorable consideration in connection with that case.
The witness agreed to help law enforcement investigate Grillo.
An FBI operation
According to an affidavit by FBI Special Agent Robert McElroy, Grillo and the witness met several times under FBI surveillance and discussed how they would get Duarte to Mexico. McElroy said the men spoke in code, with Grillo referring to the “production” and continually asking the witness what the plan was to convince Duarte to go willingly.
Grillo said Duarte would be desperate for cash, making it easy to gain her cooperation to then extort her lawyer, according to the affidavit. Grillo agreed to send the witness a check for $20,000 to arrange for a pilot and a plane to transport Duarte to Mexico, funds which McElroy said Grillo understood would also go to the cost of holding her in Mexico.
On Feb. 19, the witness received a package from Grillo containing a USB drive and a check from another of Grillo’s nonprofits for $20,000, according to the affidavit. The memo on the check read “Production.”
In a Telegram call at the FBI Phoenix field office, according to the affidavit, the witness told Grillo he wanted to make sure that they were on the same page and that “they can get her and the husband to the airport willingly and at that point they are going whether they want to or not.”
Grillo asked more questions about the security of the phone line, McElroy wrote, before responding: “Alrighty, we are good.”
After the men hung up, Grillo called back to question why that phone call needed to happen.
The witness explained that he needed to make sure they were on the same page.
“The problem with that is that if anyone picked that up it puts me right in the middle of it,” Grillo responded.
A fake photo
Grillo and the witness met for a final time at the racetrack around 11 a.m. on Tuesday this week, according to the affidavit. FBI agents outfitted the witness with audiovisual recording equipment to capture the discussion.
The witness told Grillo that they “got ‘em” and showed him what McElroy described as a “fake photograph” of a woman and a man tied up. He told Grillo it had gone according to plan and that Duarte and her husband “went willingly to the airport and then they did not go willingly.”
Duarte and her family were held captive, the witness told Grillo, but the kidnappers couldn’t take them to the place they had originally intended on in Mexico. The couple were still in Lancaster, he said.
“They haven’t left Lancaster? Oh my God. They’re holding them in Lancaster?,” Grillo responded. “Their sons are in their twenties, they can call Sheriff.”
The witness told Grillo the kidnappers needed “another ten grand.”
According to the affidavit, Grillo talked to the witness about the effects of Duarte’s kidnapping on her pending lawsuit. Grillo allegedly said if the appeal of the verdict were successful and the case were to be re-tried, “there’s no plaintiff!”
According to the affidavit, Grillo wrote a check for $10,000, for “Doc Invest.”
McElroy said Grillo mused about what he would say “if I ever get busted on this by the Feds.” According to the affidavit, Grillo told the witness “I’ve got a lot of smokescreens,” to conceal the kidnapping plot, including “the movie, make a documentary about this whole thing.”
At the end of his meeting with the witness, FBI agents moved in and searched Grillo, recovering two firearms, one on either side of him.
After his arrest, Grillo agreed to speak with FBI agents who showed him the fabricated kidnapping photograph that the witness had presented him with earlier that day.
When asked about the photo, McElroy said that Grillo identified the person in the photo as Duarte and discussed her lawsuit against his sanctuary.
“GRILLO acknowledged that, if the lawsuit was retried and Victim 1 was unable to testify, that would be a favorable development for D.E.L.T.A. Rescue,” McElroy wrote.
But Grillo repeatedly insisted he had paid the witness for his participation in a documentary unrelated to Duarte and not a kidnapping, according to McElroy.
When reached by the Times Wednesday and told about the alleged plot, Armen Manasserian, a lawyer representing Duarte in the bankruptcy proceedings, said “my jaw is on the floor right now.”
“I think it’s now clear that it’s not just about bad mouthing her in the press or manipulating judicial process to ensure she never gets paid, but something a lot more sinister,” Manasserian said. “I don’t have the words.”
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