FORT LAUDERDALE — Two South Florida men were arrested this week by federal authorities for their history in participating in dog fights.
The FBI raided Alex Benefield and Tramaine Randall’s homes in Broward County on Tuesday and arrested them for violating the Animal Fighting Venture Prohibition Act, which is a part of the larger Animal Welfare Act. According to the federal complaints obtained by CBS News Miami, Benefield is also accused of conspiracy as he was considered one of the “top dog fighting trainers and dog fighters in South Florida.”
Federal authorities seized nearly three dozen dogs from their properties during the raid.
Wayne Pacelle, the president of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofits Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy, praised the FBI for the investigation and arrests.
“Given all that dogs do for us, it’s especially distressing when people commit acts of senseless cruelty to them,” he said in a statement issued on Saturday. “And no act is more gruesome or barbaric or intentionally cruel than dogfighting.”
The investigations
Throughout the investigation, the FBI had used an informant wearing hidden recording equipment, who helped the agency gather information and the evidence it needed to serve arrest warrants for Benefield and Randall.
Meetings with Benefield
According to the arrest documents, the informant knew Benefield in the dog fighting world and has further known him since they were both teenagers. He was the one who told the FBI that Benefield was considered to be one of the “top” individuals in dog fighting, having taken part in dogfighting since 2014.
Around Feb. 7, 2023, the informant met with Benefield at his Deerfield Beach home and talked about dogfighting and bragging about how his training had led to winning fights for his clients.
Next month, the informant met with Benefield again, where he was introduced to his dog “Blueface” and showed him a video of the dog “killing and eating one of the dogs in the backyard,” the arrest documents said.
“This is what I come home to,” Benefield allegedly said. “When I come home in the yard, that’s what I find.”
Benefield continued, allegedly telling the informant that Blueface had killed five other dogs. He then shared another video with the informant that allegedly showed a female dog fight and described the techniques the dogs used.
Then on Dec. 14, 2024, the informant met with Benefield again, where he had talked to him about another dog fight from three days prior and made several comments expressing frustration about losing to a dog he had previously owned that was now in Randall’s possession.
Benefield then asked the informant to join him in his backyard to see the dog that had fought, telling him that his dog was five pounds smaller than Randall’s dog and that he ultimately conceded because “the other dog was causing too much damage to Benefield’s dog face,” the arrest documents said.
Meetings with Randall
Meanwhile, the informant has also known Randall since 2014, having been his former dogfighting partner for three years, the arrest documents said.
Around July 14, 2024, the informant attended a dog fight in Deerfield Beach, where a group of men were seen constructing a dogfighting ring using plywood and carpeting. Two dogs, believed to be pitbull mixes, were then placed inside the structure to fight. During the fight, the informant’s recording equipment captured visible blood appearing on the carpet and Randall in attendance of the fight, the arrest warrants said.
Then around Oct. 8, 2024, Randall sent videos to the informant of a recent dog fight he attended through WhatsApp, showing two other dogs fighting in another makeshift fighting ring. According to the arrest documents, unidentified men could be heard in the videos saying things like “I didn’t come to fight, I came to kill,” and “It’s going to be a bloodbath” as the dogs fought each other.
A couple of months later, the informant called Randall at the direction of law enforcement to meet up with him at his Pompano Beach home to talk about a recent dog fight. After arriving at the home, the informant asked to see fighting dogs and Randall showed him one dog that appeared to be a type of pitbull, the arrest warrants said. After meeting with Randall, the informant left.
The raids
On Tuesday, law enforcement served the federal search warrants at Benefield and Randall’s Broward County homes.
According to the arrest documents, authorities found at least 34 dogs in cages, kennels and chained up in Benefield’s backyard, showing signs of injuries persisting with dogfighting. The authorities also found equipment designed to train the dogs to fight.
Following a Miranda warning, law enforcement interviewed an unidentified man who was found living in Benefield’s backyard, claiming to be one of Benefield’s dog trainers and referred to him as “bossman.” The individual also told the authorities that only eight of the dogs at the home belonged to Benefield, while the remaining dogs belonged to other fighters who left them there to be trained.
According to the arrest documents, the individual also told the authorities that though he had never seen any of the fights, the dogs would come to the home and Benefield would “administer veterinary-type care” to the dogs and that he was training three of them for a fight that was scheduled for Saturday.
After being read his Miranda rights, Benefield denied living at the home and denied ownership of the dogs, telling authorities that they belonged to a missing man named “Tyrone Butler,” whose picture was found on a flier inside the home that said he hadn’t been seen since August 2020. Benefield also denied that he had ever fought or trained dogs for dogfighting.
During the raid on Randall’s home, law enforcement found about 10 pit bull-like dogs housed in separate cages in the backyard and a French bulldog in a separate cage in the same area. According to the arrest documents, agents found multiple dogs with injuries consistent with dogfighting and at least one of them was “actively bleeding.”
Additionally, authorities found numerous items in Randall’s backyard that were consistent with “the training, breeding and housing of fighting dogs,” the arrest documents said.
