An exotic wildlife preserve owner who gained notoriety on the popular Netflix series “Tiger King” plead guilty Monday to animal trafficking and money laundering, the U.S. Justice Department announced.

Bhagavan “Doc” Antle oversaw the sale or purchase of cheetah cubs, lion cubs, tigers and a juvenile chimpanzee that were all protected as endangered species, according to a Justice Department release. Officials said the 63-year-old man featured in a documentary miniseries about the tiger trade tried to hide animal payments as “donations” to his nonprofit organization.

  • @BestBouclettes
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    578 months ago

    Wasn’t he the guy with the sex cult-like sanctuary? If so he’s probably got a lot more to hide.

    • @spamfajitas@lemmy.world
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      58 months ago

      Pretty sure it’s his son who was uploading “adorable” animal clips to various social media sites. They’d get thousands of people to upvote/like/favorite them and you’d maybe get a handful of people in the comments mentioning it’s Doc’s son. Highly likely he was following in the footsteps of his father and most people were oblivious because aw so cute.

    • @Fisk400@feddit.nu
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      238 months ago

      I don’t think anyone gave him a pass. Everyone involved in this were sketchy as fuck but this guy didn’t have anything directly illegal to pin on him.

      The real pass was early 2000 when he appeared on talkshows and stuff. I always assumed that the guys doing it were from conservation focused and reputable zoos like Steve Irvin but a lot of them were just these weirdos.