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Inquiry Guillermo Riddle - Account: santiagoriddle - mexican species

Robert Walker

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Does anyone personally know this individual?
Name listed: Guillermo Riddle
Account: santiagoriddle
Email listed: [email protected]

Name listed elsewhere as: Santiago Guillermo Riddle Rodriguez
Selling:
1. Mexican box turtles = 1.1 $2,000
2. Yucatán box turtles = 8.8 $13,000
Anyone know the legal status of acquiring/selling these in the USA?

Claims to be from El Paso, Texas
Yes I do live in El Paso Texas and I bought these from a friend Rene Trejo
Elsewhere on the web, during the same time frame, claims to be from Eagle Pass, Texas 500 miles away from El Paso.

In addition, not a single IP from this person comes from Texas.
 

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Don't hesitate to step in and share more about yourself...
 

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Mexican Box

I've been wondering where these specimens were coming from as well. Brownsville Zoo in TX used to have a surplus of CB T. mexicana.
 
Guillermo, can you produce any evidence that these animals were collected and exported legally, or that they are captive bred from legal parents?
 
Just a note on the IP address thing: I use a VPN called IPVanish, and it causes my perceived IP address to bounce around if I'm on my cell phone, making it look like I am not where I actually am. I think most VPNs function this way, so I wouldn't take IP addresses as the only proof needed to decide whether or not to deal with someone.
 
FYI: Account (santiagoriddle) was unable to produce a valid Texas ID despite promising to do so. As a result of this and various other factors, said account is now 'Banned'.

Selling native Mexican & Yucatan box turtles with a Texas profile.
You can put the rest of the dots together at this point and figure out where all of his IPs were really coming from.
 
He is consistently lingering around, trying to use his banned account. He still has our email if he wanted to produce a valid ID, alas, he doesn't.
 

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1. Mexican box turtles = 1.1 $2,000
2. Yucatán box turtles = 8.8 $13,000
Anyone know the legal status of acquiring/selling these in the USA?


This probably won't answer your question. But here's what I found.



Yucatan Box Turtle Distribution

The Yucatan Box Turtle is an endemic species, meaning that the entire known species is isolated to a single area. The only known location of the Yucatan Box Turtle is the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, for which the turtle is named after. It is the southernmost subspecies of box turtle and is heavily isolated from the other subspecies; more so than any other type of box turtle. When first discovered, it was even believed not to be a subspecies but an independent species of its own.
yucatan.jpg
Acquiring one in the United States is almost impossible. There are only a few examples of Yucatan Box Turtles being kept in captivity in America. Few studies have been done and little information is available; but the locals of Yucatan believe that the turtle’s population may be dwindling.


In addition to what he was trying to sell the turtles here for, I found that they sell for 10K USD plus per pair in japan, and there is some question as to the legality of the species there, and questions being asked if by chance they were smuggled. Now that's not to say that would be a legal situation here.

There's not much out there about this specie.

Good Luck Robert!

Lynn Peterson
Big Time Reptiles
 
Does he actually have the turtles, and is (it appears) illegally selling a smuggled species?

Or is he just claiming to have the turtles and will take the money and run once he makes a sale?

I'm not sure which scenario is worse, honestly.
 
Darn. These people give the whole hobby and herp business a black eye. I hope that he gets caught and ends up in jail.
 
Smuggling


If that's the case, then indeed he should be jailed..My understanding, he didn't smuggle any box turtles, he purchased them from a "Rene'? in El Paso.

If in fact they were smuggled and or illegal , whether by Rene, or himself, he has openly advertised them on a couple well known national websites, Fauna being one of them, where's the Feds, if in fact they're illegal......


Just My 2 Cents......

Lynn Peterson
Big Time Reptiles
 
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