Tiger King star Bhagavan "Doc" Antle has been charged with federal cash laundering crimes involving money that allegedly got here from an operation to smuggle unlawful immigrants from Mexico to the U.S., the Division of Justice (DOJ) mentioned Monday.
Antle, a controversial wild animal coach who owns the Myrtle Seaside Safari in South Carolina, was arrested by the FBI on Friday. One in every of his staff and enterprise associates, Omar Sawyer, was additionally taken into custody.
Antle was featured within the common 2020 Netflix documentary collection that uncovered abuse inside non-public zoo operations and the unique pet commerce. The collection targeted largely on Oklahoma zoo operator Joe Unique, who has been accused of mistreating animals and was convicted in a felony plot to kill his enemy, Carole Baskin.
The DOJ mentioned Tuesday that over the past 4 months, Antle and Sawyer laundered $505,000 in money they believed to be the proceeds of a plot to smuggle unlawful immigrants throughout the Southern border.
The 2 carried our their operation by offering checks from two separate companies that falsely claimed they had been remitted for development work carried out on the Myrtle Seaside Safari, in line with the DOJ. In actuality, the checks had been a technique to permit the recipients to seem to have respectable revenue, and in alternate, Antle and Sawyer acquired a 15 p.c charge of all laundered cash.
"The grievance alleges that Antle mentioned his plan to hide the money he acquired by inflating vacationer numbers on the Myrtle Seaside Safari, and that previously he had used bulk money receipts to buy animals for which he couldn't use checks," the DOJ added in an announcement.
Antle and Sawyer are at the moment being detained on the J. Reuben Lengthy Detention Heart in Conway, South Carolina, and now face a most of 20 years in federal jail.
This doesn't mark the primary time Antle has confronted felony prices. The 62-year-old can be dealing with two felony counts of wildlife trafficking and conspiracy to wildlife trafficking prices, in addition to 13 misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to violate the Endangered Species Act and animal cruelty prices tied to trafficking lion cubs, in line with the Related Press.
A spokesperson for Individuals for the Moral Therapy of Animal (PETA), which has lengthy condemned Antle's remedy of animals, advised the information outlet earlier this week that the costs towards him are "becoming."
"It is becoming that 'Doc' Antle is behind bars after years of locking up the endangered animals he makes use of in tawdry photograph ops. His authorized woes are mounting," mentioned Debbie Metzler, affiliate director of PETA's Captive Animal Regulation Enforcement division.
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