(CN) - Leo Grillo built his reputation saving animals nobody else wanted, founding a sprawling sanctuary in the high desert north of Los Angeles that he called the largest no-kill refuge of its kind in the world.

On Tuesday, federal authorities arrested him on charges that he had tried to use kidnapping to silence a woman who had beaten him in court.

The 77-year-old former actor was charged with attempted kidnapping after prosecutors say he spent months plotting to have a former employee abducted and flown to Mexico, where she and her husband would be held hostage until she agreed to settle a wrongful termination lawsuit that had resulted in a $6.7 million judgment against his organization, Dedication and Everlasting Love to Animals, known as DELTA Rescue.

The charge carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.

Prosecutors say that in December 2025, Grillo sought out a contact - who is now a cooperating witness - and asked to meet in person. He insisted on face-to-face meetings, demanded his contact leave his cellphone in the car and communicated in what an FBI investigator described as coded language, referring to the kidnapping scheme as a documentary or production. 

At a second meeting in January at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank, Grillo described what he actually wanted, according to an FBI agent's testimony included in the criminal complaint.

He wanted the woman who had sued him kidnapped along with a family member, transported to Mexico and held against their will.

"He would be willing to pay $100,000 to make that happen," investigators said, adding that Grillo wanted the woman and her husband "flown out of an airport in Lancaster, California."

With the appeal of the $6.7 million verdict pending and a settlement conference approaching, prosecutors say Grillo wanted leverage over the woman who had beaten him in court.

If the case were retried and the plaintiff could not appear, Grillo told the cooperating witness, the outcome would be simple: "There's no plaintiff! . . . I'm her, I'm not showing up for the retrial."

DELTA Rescue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May 2025 and is appealing the November 2024 verdict, in which a jury awarded the former employee $5.68 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.

In February 2026, Grillo mailed the cooperating witness a $20,000 check from an account called "Animals Are People Too," of which Grillo is president. The memo line read "Production," consistent, prosecutors say, with the coded terminology Grillo had adopted for the plot.

Days later, in a recorded phone call monitored by FBI agents, the cooperating witness laid out the plan in explicit terms, telling Grillo: "They can get her and the husband to the airport willingly and at that point they are going whether they want to or not. That flight's taking off for a remote part of Mexico."

Grillo responded: "Alrighty, we are good."

The scheme purportedly unraveled on March 3. The cooperating witness met Grillo at the equestrian center and showed him a fabricated photograph on his cellphone appearing to depict the victim and her husband bound with zip ties, duct tape over the woman's mouth.

Told that the kidnapping had gone according to plan but that a new flight route to Mexico was needed, Grillo wrote a second check for $10,000. Federal agents, monitoring the meeting in real time, arrested him at the end. Two firearms were recovered from Grillo.

After receiving his Miranda warnings, Grillo agreed to speak with investigators. He acknowledged recognizing the woman in the fabricated photograph and said that her inability to testify at a retrial would be a favorable development for D.E.L.T.A. Rescue.

He said the payments were for a legitimate documentary.

The FBI and the United States Postal Inspection Service are investigating. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Kevin Butler, Kevin Reidy and Haoxiaohan Cai.

Representatives for Grillo and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Source: Courthouse News Service