Snakes stolen from Santa Cruz dealer

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/arc...es/06local.htm



Snakes stolen from Santa Cruz dealer
By Terri Morgan
Sentinel Correspondent
Detectives with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office are trying to find out who stole $10,000 worth of live snakes from a local man over the past two months.

The reptiles disappeared while being shipped from Santa Cruz to customers in various parts of the country, authorities say.

The first snake, a Super Pastel Ball Python worth $7,000, was boxed up by a Santa Cruz snake dealer for shipment to a customer in Kansas. The customer, who was trading the dealer a similarly priced snake, called to complain the 2-inch thick Styrofoam shipping box was empty when it arrived at his home.

Initially, the owner of Santa Cruz Reptiles, who had shipped the snake, was incredulous.

"At that point, I thought he was trying to pull a fast one on me," said Steve, whose last name is not being used because he fears being the target of future thefts. "I've shipped a few hundred shipments in the 10 years I've been in business and never had an incident like that."

But the same thing happened again last week.

On Monday, the snake dealer packed up four female pythons worth about $3,000 and shipped them to a longstanding customer in Georgia. The reptiles were missing when the box arrived.

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The snake dealer told sheriff's deputies he normally hands the packaged snakes directly to a UPS driver. However, he brought both packages that arrived empty to a shop that handles packages for shipment.

In addition to calling the police to report the thefts, the snake dealer plans to do some detective work of his own. He's having the customer in Georgia send back the empty box in hope of recovering some fingerprints from it. And he plans to contact pet stores in the San Francisco Bay Area to be on the lookout for his snakes in case someone comes in to try to sell them.

Sgt. Fred Plageman said the Sheriff's Office occasionally receives reports of stolen reptiles. However, most of those cases involve residential burglaries. Still, he wasn't surprised to hear about the snake wrangling.

"Anything that has value is of interest to criminals," he said. "It's no different than any other crime. In terms of the investigation, it's grand theft."

Contact Terri Morgan at tdunlap@santacruzsentinel.com.

There's a thread related to this on the BOI that started in January, I believe.

Not only is there a BOI thread, I believe this theft was already report in "Herps in the News' last month.

Exotic snakes stolen during shipping 3-14-2006