MIAMI (CBSMiami/AP) – A Florida man has been sentenced to seven months in federal jail adopted by a yr of dwelling confinement for his half in a scheme to smuggle illegally harvested Florida turtles to China, Japan, and different locations.
Michael Van Nostrand, 55, of Davie, was sentenced Tuesday in Miami federal court docket, in line with court docket information.
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He pleaded responsible in November to conspiring to illegally visitors wildlife.
Van Nostrand additionally should pay $100,000 to a congressionally approved fund that pays for the care, therapy, and rehabilitation of wildlife.
Van Nostrand’s firm, Strictly Reptiles Inc., should pay $150,000 to the identical fund.
According to court docket paperwork, Van Nostrand and others established a community of “collectors” who searched the Florida wilds for sure freshwater turtle specimens, together with the three-stripe mud turtle, from April 2017 by way of April 2019.
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The collectors and Van Nostrand then falsely labeled the turtles as having been bred in captivity, slightly than caught within the wild, prosecutors mentioned.
Florida banned the industrial catch of turtles in 2009.
Prosecutors famous in court docket filings that vital stress is being positioned on native species, particularly turtles and tortoises, all through the United States to fulfill the black market pet commerce and that the U.S. is going through the specter of some species changing into extinct within the wild due to unlawful poaching actions.
Van Nostrand gained notoriety by way of “The Lizard King,” a 2008 bestseller that described a U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent’s yearslong investigation of his enterprise.
He was in the end sentenced to eight months in jail in 1998 for purchasing smuggled Argentine boas, tegu lizards, and different protected wildlife, and was required to pay $250,000 to the World Wildlife Fund.
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