Snapping Turtle Smuggling from NY to Baltimore for MEAT!

March 20, 2009
State Officials Charge 17 in Illegal Animal Trade
By A. G. SULZBERGER
The smugglers moved their goods across borders using secret compartments, a Maryland meat processing plant and the help of a corrupt Louisiana turtle farm. Their lucrative product: rattlesnakes, snapping turtles and salamanders.

This was the portrait of a trade in illegal reptiles and amphibians that New York State environmental authorities painted on Thursday, when a two-year undercover investigation called Operation Shellshock ended with criminal charges against 17 people. More charges were filed by officials in other states and Canada, the New York officials said.

The case had the familiar ring of a drug bust, but it was instead built in the unlikely world of herpetological shows and included charges against leaders at organizations like the New York Turtle and Tortoise Society, the Long Island Herpetological Society, and the pet Web site turtlesale.com, a Florida-based company that is also facing New York charges.

“Our investigators began this operation with a simple question: Is there a commercial threat to our critical wildlife species?” Pete Grannis, the commissioner of the State Department of Environmental Conservation, which conducted the investigation, said in a statement.

What they found alarmed them. “A very lucrative illegal market for these creatures does exist, fostered by a strong, clandestine culture of people who want to exploit wildlife for illegal profit,” Mr. Grannis said.

In New York, 17 people were charged with 14 felonies, 11 misdemeanors and dozens of violations. Six people were charged in Pennsylvania, and one in Canada. The United States attorney’s office for the Western District of New York is pursuing charges against a Maryland meat processor, Turtle Deluxe, and a Louisiana turtle farm that was not identified, the authorities said.

The authorities said that Emanuele Tesoro, a prison guard from Watertown, Ontario, drove 33 endangered Massasauga rattlesnakes — hidden throughout his van in door compartments, behind speakers and in the trunk hatch — across the border to make a deal with undercover authorities in a parking lot in Niagara Falls, N.Y. To reduce suspicion, his wife and children were also in the van as he crossed into the United States, said Capt. Michael Van Durme, of the environmental crimes investigation unit.

Two Long Island men, Adam C. Borisuk and Michael D. Brooks, sent tens of thousands of young snapping turtle hatchlings, collected from ponds and lakes throughout the area, to a turtle farm in Louisiana, Captain Van Durme said. The farm’s owner would then mix the illegally harvested common snapping turtles with the alligator snapping turtles he was licensed to farm, for export to China and eventually dinner plates, he said.

New York State law prohibits the illegal commercialization of wildlife and possession of protected species, and a 2006 law specifically protects all reptiles and amphibians.

The case began after an entire population of spotted turtles being studied by students at the University of Buffalo simply disappeared, said Captain Van Durme, who supervised the investigation. State environmental protection officials had learned of cases breaking up reptile smuggling rings in other states, and opened an undercover investigation. Officers made contacts while pretending to operate a wildlife photography booth at reptile shows, then moved to buying and selling animals as they built their case.

Buyers included collectors who paid thousands of dollars to add highlights to their collections with hard-to-get specimens, as well as Chinese consumers with a well-known taste for snapping turtle meat, which can be had at roughly $1 a pound.

Frank Indiviglio, a former keeper at the Staten Island and Bronx Zoos who has written and spoken extensively about reptiles, said that while illegal trade was well known, it did not reflect the reptile-loving community in general.

“The local herpetological societies are almost always conservation-oriented,” he said.

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State puts bite on cold-blooded operation
Authorities say 18 people charged after probe into large-scale poaching of reptiles, amphibians

By BRIAN NEARING, Staff writer
First published in print: Friday, March 20, 2009

ALBANY — It took months for undercover state conservation police officers Daniel Sullivan and Richard Thomas to be trusted within the tight-knit world of illegal "herping" — shorthand for poaching of reptiles and amphibians.

But once inside, the pair uncovered a thriving black market for some of New York's most-threatened wildlife that stretched across eight states and into Canada and as far as Germany and China.

In one instance, a dealer bragged that he had made $100,000 in a year by selling thousands of snapping turtles to a Louisiana turtle farm that "laundered" the transaction before shipping the animals to China for food.

In another case, a poacher who had been taking venomous copperheads — which can sell for several hundred dollars — from the Mohonk Preserve near New Paltz showed Thomas a home video of the swelling and discoloration that spread through his arm after being bitten by one of the snakes.

And a reptile dealer from Canada was arrested in a Niagara Falls parking lot after he smuggled in 33 endangered massasauga rattlesnakes in the door panels of a minivan in exchange for Eastern timber rattlesnakes. Timber rattlers are a threatened species in New York, where populations are limited to certain rocky ledges around Lake George and parts of the Catskill Mountains.

On Thursday, state officials revealed a three-year undercover investigation dubbed Operation Shellshock into the trafficking of protected species — turtles, snakes and salamanders — through the Internet and at herpetological shows where collectors buy, sell and trade animals like baseball cards.

So far, 18 people have been charged with 34 felonies, 31 misdemeanors and more than 2,000 violations, with investigators documenting more than 2,400 illegal sales. About 400 live animals are being held as evidence.

Most arrests were made within the metropolitan New York area and lower Hudson Valley, although a Ballston Spa man, Sean Kirk, 34, was among those charged with a misdemeanor, Kirk allegedly sold three Eastern box turtles native to New York to Thomas for $550.

Kirk, who could not be reached for comment, has sold reptiles over the Internet under the name of Sean's Exotics, and has used the Web site herps4sale.com. His most recent site has been taken down.

Penalties for illegal wildlife sales range from up to 15 days in jail and a $250 fine to a $5,000 fine and a four-year prison term. Illegal sales have been traced to New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Florida, Louisiana, Ohio, and Hawaii.

"A very lucrative illegal market for these creatures does exist, fostered by a strong, clandestine culture of people who want to exploit wildlife for illegal profit," said state Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Pete Grannis at a news conference at DEC headquarters into the state's largest undercover wildlife sting.

Since 2006, it has been illegal to buy, sell, collect or possess any of the state's native reptiles and amphibians, although permits allow for limited educational uses. Earlier laws were less comprehensive and varied from species to species.


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During the investigation, DEC worked with wildlife officials from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Florida as well as the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Canada's national environmental agency and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.
Thomas said the probe began in early 2006 after a complaint from SUNY researchers, who reported 30 spotted turtles, some embedded with radio transmitters as part of a four-year study, suddenly vanished. Those turtles have never been found.

Sullivan and Thomas started looking at "herp" sites on the Internet to learn language and customs. By August, they were attending shows in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. ''We got a lot of face time, so people would know us,'' said Thomas, a lieutenant with DEC's Bureau of Environmental Crimes.

Their work was to lead them to places as varied as a remote pond on Long Island, where a poacher allegedly took out a thousand turtle eggs in one day, to the crowded streets of Chinatown in New York City, where turtles were illegally sold.

Thomas passed himself off as a vendor of high-end reptile and amphibian photographs, which encouraged some collectors to show him their illegal animals. The photographs are now evidence.

"We bought, we sold. And there were a few times that I got frisked to make sure that I was not wearing a wire,'' said Sullivan, a DEC investigator. He was wearing a wire when one poacher said it would be impossible to get caught with illegal animals, because DEC could never mount an undercover sting.

Sullivan said another poacher bragged that he had built a room in his home just to incubate turtle eggs, and he could handle up to 20,000 eggs at a time.

"He told me that he had sold $100,000 worth of hatchling snapping turtles, tax free, last year alone," said Sullivan.

Brian Nearing can be reached at 454-5094 or by email at [email protected].



To view the state Department of Environmental Conservation's request for a search warrant that outlines the smuggling investigation, go to http://blogs.timesunion.com/green/

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tight-knit world of illegal "herping" — shorthand for poaching of reptiles and amphibians.

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