Johnny larocca (Tegu terra)

I did business with Johnny la Rocca (teguterra.com). It started more than 1.5 years ago. I first met him in the Tegu Keepers UK group. He was clearly on a mission to get some blue tegus. At that time the first blues ever bred in Europe popped up all over Europe and all bred from wild caught blues from an island from Brazil. Three breeders in the UK, one in the Netherlands (that's me and my boyfriend) and one in Germany, Johnny was asking all of us to do a deal with him. The breeders in the UK thought it was too difficult with all the paperwork. Me and the German guy started a deal with Johnny. The German guy (I will not call his name) sent five blues for an extremely low price. Normally blues go for $500 each and even higher here in Europe. He sold them 100 or 150 euros each to Johnny as far as I know with the promise he would sell captive bred tegus back for an equally low price.

Our deal with Johnny was that we would send 10 blue tegus from three bloodlines for free. He only had to pay shipping. And we would get 1 het albino baby blue male, 2 albino baby blue females, 2 adult or subadult male Chacoan giants, and 3 female Chacoan giants, all of his own captive breeding. We had mostly contact by Facebook, but I decided I wanted it confirmed by email so I could always find it back later if needed. Here is the email he sent that confirmed the deal on the 16 of June 2013:




Everything went very quickly. He responded quickly and I got the import license from Johnny only a week later on the 23 of June, 2013. Everything went smooth.








Then only 2.5 weeks later we sent the blue tegus to Johnny. We chose the most beautiful blue tegus we had to send to him, even some we wanted to keep for our selves, with the hope Johnny would send also his best. And that was what he promised.




Then we only got silence. We had sent the tegus but did not get any contact with him for three days. I wanted to know if he received them and how they were doing. I called him on his phone, I texted him on facebook... Nothing... Then he finally contacted me. He was very angry, because I was inpatient and my boyfrend very rude! Jan Paul is very direct and says everything that is on his mind, but rude he is not. He had all the reasons to do so! But Johnny was very mad at him and was always talking about trust issues. Jan Paul was still very mad at him not just because of the way he treated me, but because of all the money and risk we took.

Johnny said he would send them back if I did not want to do business. Of course I did not want to send them back. It cost us already around 600 euros to send them, that is 723 USD. So we made an apology. I tried contacting him so often, because I was only worried about the blue babies who were only 6 to 12 weeks old. He never sent us pictures and was mad because he didn't like the way we packaged those Tegus. He said the US airport almsot refused the package. Our exotci shipping company said it was fine: plastic boxes inside foam insulated shipping boxes. We did it perfect when we see his shipment way after that! Ours was just the way it was supposed to be.



Now he had our babies the silence and excuses began. I contacted him a lot via Facebook. I asked for CITES paperwork and when the blue eggs would hatch. Then he told me he did not even had eggs yet and also no pregnant females.... So I had to wait at least 4 more months. I got the CITES papers and asked for the import license at the CITES bureau (fish and wildlife) here in the Netherlands. It took a little longer and when I got a yes, the CITES was expired... So I asked Johnny for new CITES. He said it was no problem. Then I waited... And waited... Nothing... He told me there was some reason the CITES papers did not come in as quick as normal.... I had a deadline to deliver the new CITES... I already knew a little how he works... So I lied about the deadline. I said it was some days before the real deadline. I already had the feeling he wanted to delay the whole thing so that’s why I gave him a fake deadline. So on the fake deadline of course I did not get in contact with him. I send him pm’s on Facebook and I emailed him. At 17:00 the CITES bureau was closed and he finally contacted me at 17:32. So I was just 32 minutes too late for the fake deadline. So the next week on Monday I have the new CITES to send and it was just in time. This was on 20th of December, 2013:
















In Italy a guy got 3 black and white and 3 Chacoan giants. When he got his tegus and unpacked them the first black and white was already dead. After some time also one of the Chacoan giants died. He has them in the freezer, but did not do a necropsy on them.





Johnny promised us his own captive bred Chacoan tegus. This promise he probably did not keep because Salmonella is a typical disease for wild caught animals. Also all the animals were damaged in a way I am pretty sure suggests is wild caught. Next to that they have the typical look of a Florida wild caught tegu. Jan Paul has worked for 25 years 24/7 with reptiles, and did a lot of work in import industry. When you work with thousands of wild caught animals you start to recognize those in an instance. The character and behavior of the tegus Johnny sent is typical in wild specimens. No question about that, and if those are captive bred animals?! Than they are the worst kind we have ever seen and worked with.....!

Every time I talked to Johnny, he was very sick. He told me he had massive headaches and needed surgery. Later he told me he went to surgery. The surgery went horribly wrong from what I understand and he got paralyzed. Now he told me every time I talked to him that he quickly had to go for therapy so he could walk again in the future. It was all a very sad story. But we were halfway doing business and he was not very helpful. This is the email I sent to Johnny on the 27th of May 2014 telling Johnny the paperwork would expire in only a month...










He told me had the tegus, but he could not send them because he was paralyzed and he could not go to the airport himself to bring them. He said it must be him in person. If he would ask a courier it would cost me 1000 dollars extra. Then the paperwork was expired. I had almost given up. I could not get new paperwork because the Dutch CITES bureau is very difficult in this. Then our friend in Germany who also had a deal with him decided to help us and then a guy in Italy who was waiting forever and had paid a lot of money. The German friend did the new paperwork and in October 2014 we finally could pick up the tegus at the German airport.

We drove 6 hours to the airport and picked them up. They were in paper boxes in a bag. When we stopped in a parking lot on the way home, we opened the bags just to be sure they were ok. They were a little cold. They had lots of old wounds and my boyfriend and I first said these were not captive bred animals! But we were just happy we got them alive so we drove home quickly 6 hours back. At home we warmed them up and put them in a bath, and after bath in the enclosures. The next day the first Chacoan was dead. After a week the second died. They looked the worst so we thought it would be the last dead one. Then some weeks after that the 3rd died. We did not trust it and went to the vet with the dead one and the last 4 who were still alive. We did a blood test, fecal test, and a bacterial test on the live ones. Nothing strange came out of the tests. Our vet did a necrospsy on the dead one. Everything looked good except the intestine. There was something growing on the inside. We send a part of it to the lab and this was the outcome of it:






It says it’s a Salmonella infection.

I talked to a Belgium guy who imported 5 Chacoan giant tegus from Johnny, paying big money. One died very quickly after he got them and at least one is still very sick. I did a necropsy on his dead tegu and also the outcome was Salmonella:

This sould have bin in the second post on the end. Somehow it all got mixed up and i can not change it anymore...

Originally Posted by Renske

Johnny promised us his own captive bred Chacoan tegus. This promise he probably did not keep because Salmonella is a typical disease for wild caught animals. Also all the animals were damaged in a way I am pretty sure suggests is wild caught. Next to that they have the typical look of a Florida wild caught tegu. Jan Paul has worked for 25 years 24/7 with reptiles, and did a lot of work in import industry. When you work with thousands of wild caught animals you start to recognize those in an instance. The character and behavior of the tegus Johnny sent is typical in wild specimens. No question about that, and if those are captive bred animals?! Than they are the worst kind we have ever seen and worked with.....!

There was a publicized thread on one of the tegu forums showing evidence Johnny was selling the tegus wild caught from the Florida population as CB Chacoans. Sorry about the bad transaction.

such a shame. Sorry you had to experience this.

Right now it's looking like Johnny is nothing more than a crook. Sorry you're having to deal with all this, Renske, and hope you find some sort of resolution.

I hope all works out well for you, Renske. Did I hear that another tegu is sick?

If he's exporting WC tegus under a CBB CITES permit I'm sure USFW would be interested in this.....

^^^ Yes I agree but I doubt they could prove they're Florida WC stock. He has the adults to be able to produce the "Chacoan"(fancy term for B&W's) but highly doubt he did.

I think the hobby would prefer a quieter outcome.