An Oxnard man was sentenced to 65 months in prison in U.S. federal court on May 28 for smuggling at least 1,700 reptiles from Mexico.
Jose Manuel Perez, 34, previously pleaded guilty to two counts of smuggling goods into the country and one count of wildlife tracking in August 2022, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The man is also serving a nine-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to being a felon in possession of firearms and had been previously convicted in Ventura County Superior Court for street terrorism and assault with a deadly weapon, DOJ officials said.
The nearly five and a half-year prison sentence comes after Perez and other co-conspirators were found to have smuggled in wildlife from Mexico and other countries from January 2016 to February 2022, the DOJ said.
The smugglers would use social media to negotiate the sale and delivery of wildlife, including Yucatán box turtles, Mexican box turtles, baby crocodiles and Mexican beaded lizards without proper Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, permits, federal officials said.
The man would also post pictures and videos on social media, advertising the animals for sale, with the fair market value of the reptiles estimated at more than $739,000, the DOJ said.
The smuggling network included retrieving animals from Ciudad Juárez International Airport in Mexico and transporting them via car to El Paso, Texas, where Perez paid his accomplices a crossing fee when transporting the animals across the border.
The animals would be transported to be kept at his home in Missouri, until he moved to California, where they would instead be kept at his Ventura County home, federal officials said.
On occasion, Perez would also travel with co-conspirators to Mexico to purchase additional live animals taken from the wild, DOJ officials said.
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service investigated the smuggling with the help of other federal agencies.
Ernesto Centeno Araujo covers breaking news for the Ventura County Star. He can be reached at ecentenoaraujo@vcstar.com, 805-437-0224 or @ecentenoaraujo on Instagram and X.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Oxnard man sentenced to over 5 years for smuggling over 1,700 reptiles
Reporting by Ernesto Centeno Araujo, Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
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