The Black Market for Venus Flytraps

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Flytrap Farm specializes in the bulk sale of Venus flytraps. One night, last September, a group of people broke into Joe and Cindy's greenhouses. They just pulled the plants out, put them in our bags that they had come in here,. Break-in set us back 15 years, just like when we started.

Every year for the past few years, tens of thousand of flytraps have gone missing – from the wild, from gardens, from nurseries. And, really, nobody knows where they go. What’s cropped up in rural North Carolina is essentially a Venus Flytrap crime ring — with lackies, middle men, and a mysterious end buyer who’s perpetuating the market.

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