The illegal wildlife trade globally is worth in the tens of billions.
Particularly in the Middle East and Dubai,
these exotic pets have a long history of being status symbols,
but nobody really asked the question of where did this cub come from.
How do you end up with a cub at your home in Dubai?
[Super_Users]
[Foeke Postma]
My name is Foeke Postma. I work for Bellingcat,
and I expose celebrities facilitating illegal wildlife trade on Instagram.
I just searched for “Dubai tiger” on YouTube.
And one of the first videos anyone will see when they do this
is probably from Mo Vlogs.
And Mo Vlogs is a Dubai-based vlogger,
and he has 10 million subscribers.
And he had a video up
where he has lion and tiger cubs brought to his home.
He didn’t quite explain where these cubs were coming from either.
But one interesting detail was that he did thank an Instagram account
in the description of the YouTube video.
And this Instagram account, @mbe.777, was set to private.
Why advertise an Instagram account that is set to private?
And what does this Instagram account
have to do with the lion and tiger cubs
that were brought to his home?
By following the Instagram handle that I saw in his YouTube video,
I came across all kinds of posts on Facebook, Instagram,
also on YouTube,
where there were celebrities and influencer types
who were posing with lions and tiger cubs.
And they were all very popular.
Some are having to the millions of followers.
And they are actresses and models, football stars, but also rappers.
And they all tied back at this first YouTube account
that relates to mbe.777.
I saw that something shady was going on there.
I had to make a fake Instagram account,
and I needed to make it convincing, of course.
I got in. There were so many pictures to look at.
He was surprisingly very aware of what he was sharing.
Almost as if he knew what he was doing was illegal.
And at a certain point,
I came across another Instagram account
that was posting photos and videos of that same interior
of the rooms that I saw at mbe.777′s Instagram account,
who was also, like I said, posting from this location.
At a certain point,
this Russian lady also photographed another few... in Dubai
that showed very far in the distance part of a Ferris wheel.
And if you've investigated Dubai a little bit,
you know that there’s a Ferris wheel on the coastline.
And from there, it's very easy to trace steps back.
That view, combined with the blue sign that I saw in her posts earlier,
led me to a very specific apartment.
In order to find out where they were living,
I had to do something which we call geolocation.
And geolocation is the practice of finding out
the geographical location of media online.
You might look at details that you see in the distance or the street
or buildings or trees,
and those details will help you find the location
anywhere in the world, basically.
By searching for this apartment,
I came across rental advertisements
where I saw the exact same TV furniture
that I saw in the beginning of mbe.777′s Instagram profile.
And that’s when I became certain about, OK, I now know
that mbe.777 is living together with this Russian lady,
and they are keeping all of these animals inside of this apartment
high up in Dubai.
I looked at all these tiger cubs and lion cubs
and tried to identify if they were the same cub.
A tiger doesn't change his stripes.
So you can look at the stripes of a tiger cub
and match it to different pictures with different celebrities.
The unique marking that really showed that this was the same cub
was a small squiggly line across its cheek,
and it had a small black spot right up here.
I started looking at other videos where mbe.777 was tagged,
and repeatedly this face kept coming back
every time the cubs appeared as well.
And so that’s how I eventually figured out that
that face that I had, I could connect it to mbe.777.
Before publishing our investigation,
of course, we reached out to these people.
Immediately after I contacted this person,
he changed his Instagram handle
and eventually even deleted his accounts
with thousands and thousands of followers.
So I think he really took it seriously what we were investigating.
Shutting down his Instagram account
really felt as if you’re taking out a node
in this network of illegal wildlife trade.
But unfortunately, it also feels like a drop in the bucket.
Anyone can go on Instagram right now and search for #cheetah #forsale,
and you will come across accounts that are doing the same.
And it’s tragic.
Why do you need to exploit little tiger cubs?
And don’t you have any idea of the damage you’re causing
when you’re selling cheetah cubs?
We need a cultural change
where we no longer consider these animals as status symbols,
but as something that needs to be preserved.