borneo ppl are fucking sick !!!

[Lucian Darth]

S$20000 is nothing. Remember that corrupt guy from LTA who was caught recently? He paid much much more for a sting ray. There is a reclusive guy in Singapore who has a pond the size of a swimming pool full of huge Arapaimas. He feeds them daily with 20 kilos of ikan kuning.:*:

Wah lau eh why dun feed me?I really can't comprehend leh, I have yet to find something that I am willing to pay so more for, I mean as in living thing.

 

[drifter]

A large size Gecko common in South Asia can be sold for more than a hundred thousand S$. I have seen this Gecko many times and never knew they were so valuable. I have half a mind to buy some and breed them for profit, but they cannot be brought into Singapore as AVA banned imports of wild lizards. Which makes it difficult for Singaporeans, so we have to do this business outside of Singapore.

yes bro ....thats why im in japan ( to pursuit my hobby ) ...but if you have the right connection in singapore you could get anything ..trust me . pm me if you need anything send to your door step dont need to go oversea to buy it

 

[Lucian Darth]

oh yes ...some rays can cost up to 50k . i have customers who keeps and breed rays too . just for your infor in case you want to breed and make a living out of it . stingrays breed in a very aggressive manner, where the male will get under the female, and hold her in a tight grip with his jaws, by biting her disc edge. for the best results, the male should be smaller than the female, so that he does not overpower the female, which can lead to terrible injuries to the female. another thing which can help is to have more than one female in the tank with the male, with a ratio of two females to every male often working best, so that the female wont be bothered constantly by the male (his attention may wander to the other female). rays are livebearers, and will give birth to live young after a pregnancy which can last 130 days or more (not much is know about the length of pregnancy's, as not very many people have bred them in captivity). between 1 and 4 pups are born at a time (need a bit of backup on that one).

To keep a pet and take such care, I will have to tie up my kids first. They like to do what that braces girl did in NEMO. They knocked on fish tank, terrorized the fish and yes shakes the plastic if got fish inside. Very tempting idea.......but I heard spore tap water's pH not suitable right, wah like that very tough sia. Jaga the fish, jaga the water, jaga the food, jaga my offsprings, if the fish got offsprings, got to jaga the offsprings. Hmm if only I know abt this trade b4 my kids come out, then at least can make a killing first then at least dun ve to worry so much. Bro thanks for ur advice!

 

[drifter]

Wah lau eh why dun feed me?I really can't comprehend leh, I have yet to find something that I am willing to pay so more for, I mean as in living thing.

bro...you can consider be a part-time breeder at home to earn extra income ...animals business is huge all over the world ...including singapore .

 

[Lucian Darth]

yes bro ....thats why im in japan ( to pursuit my hobby ) ...but if you have the right connection in singapore you could get anything ..trust me . pm me if you need anything send to your door step dont need to go oversea to buy it

Wah r u going to airmal a lizard from Japan to him?!!!

 

[drifter]

To keep a pet and take such care, I will have to tie up my kids first. They like to do what that braces girl did in NEMO. They knocked on fish tank, terrorized the fish and yes shakes the plastic if got fish inside. Very tempting idea.......but I heard spore tap water's pH not suitable right, wah like that very tough sia. Jaga the fish, jaga the water, jaga the food, jaga my offsprings, if the fish got eggs, got to jaga the eggs. Hmm if only I know abt this trade b4 my kids come out, then at least can make a killing first then at least dun ve to worry so much. Bro thanks for ur advice!

bro..in the market theres a product to control your water ph too you might want to start with reptiles ..which are easy to breed and maintain .

 

[drifter]

Wah r u going to airmal a lizard from Japan to him?!!!

nah ...i got my men in singapore doing import and export to other countries

 

[Windsor]

yes bro ....thats why im in japan ( to pursuit my hobby ) ...but if you have the right connection in singapore you could get anything ..trust me . pm me if you need anything send to your door step dont need to go oversea to buy it

Thanks Bro, but I know where to find them. Offer the natives less than $S100 for each small one and more if need be I can get them. Only problem is not being able to trade in them here. It is in my future plans though to set up something next year as I am tied down in Singapore for the time being.

 

[Windsor]

bro..in the market theres a product to control your water ph too you might want to start with reptiles ..which are easy to breed and maintain .

Just bought some TDH Meters and giving away to my siblings for their use. PH Meters are very expensive and the cheapos from China hard to trust their quality.

 

[drifter]

Thanks Bro, but I know where to find them. Offer the natives less than $S100 for each small one and more if need be I can get them. Only problem is not being able to trade in them here. It is in my future plans though to set up something next year as I am tied down in Singapore for the time being.

bro..dont have to pay $100 to those natives ...sin$10 is more then enough reptiles ( just reptiles not animals) business profit are usually 500% . bro , theres alot of reptiles collectors in singapore and malaysia ...tons of them go to docserpent website ( a singaporean base in jb owns it ) ..and you will know what i mean

 

[drifter]

Just bought some TDH Meters and giving away to my siblings for their use. PH Meters are very expensive and the cheapos from China hard to trust their quality.

. guess you also into fishes

 

[Windsor]

bro..dont have to pay $100 to those natives ...sin$10 is more then enough reptiles ( just reptiles not animals) business profit are usually 500% . bro , theres alot of reptiles collectors in singapore and malaysia ...tons of them go to docserpent website ( a singaporean base in jb owns it ) ..and you will know what i mean

Thanks, I visited the website you passed on. It is more for snakes than the others but still a useful link. Anyway it confirms doing this business, it is best not to do it in Singapore due to restrictions.

 

[drifter]

Thanks, I visited the website you passed on. It is more for snakes than the others but still a useful link. Anyway it confirms doing this business, it is best not to do it in Singapore due to restrictions.

bro...some snakes are not cheap too ..can cost up to sin$15 k . the website owner is my friend ...ever caught in US trying to bring in star totise ( which are ban in the US ) cost price is just sin$15 can sell to US for usd$500 per head .


Endangered creatures for sale
Illegal animal trade reaps billions yearly

By CHARLES SEABROOK
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Lawrence Wee Soon Chye, who once advised National Geographic filmmakers with his authoritative knowledge of reptiles, hung his head as a federal judge tongue-lashed him in an Orlando courtroom.

"Your crimes are reprehensible," said U.S. District Judge John Antoon. "They not only are a form of animal cruelty, they also endanger public health." Antoon wished out loud that he could sentence Chye to a much longer sentence than the 37 months federal guidelines allow.

Chye, 38, in a prison jumpsuit brilliant as a scarlet macaw, pleaded guilty this month to charges that he smuggled hundreds of endangered and protected creatures to dealers and collectors in the United States last January. His lucrative black market career, likely spawned by his fascination with reptiles as a child in Singapore, was over.

Tens of thousands of endangered wild creatures from Brazil, Indonesia, Ghana and other countries are being smuggled each year to black markets in the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan. Traffickers entice native people -- often resourceful children -- to capture coveted animals from rain forests and other wild habitats. A hyacinth macaw bought for $100 from an impoverished Amazon youngster can fetch as much as $10,000 from collectors in the United States and Europe.

Antoon summed up the consequences of the illegal animal trade: Not only does it threaten many species with extinction and risk despoiling entire natural areas, but it also threatens public health by introducing exotic germs, many of them deadly, to humans.

Both of this year's novel scourges, monkeypox and SARS, stemmed from contact with wild animals. And West Nile virus may have originated in the United States with an infected smuggled bird.

It was the rank odor wafting from two boxes shipped from Singapore, boxes labeled "books and magazines," that provoked a U.S. customs inspector at the FedEx hub in Memphis to look inside.

No books. No magazines. The inspector recoiled at what he saw.

Numerous reptiles, a few of them dead, packed tightly inside -- 198 Fly River turtles from New Guinea, 25 Indian star tortoises from India, and three Timor monitor lizards -- among the species protected by international law because of their increasing scarcity in the wild. And many of them potential carriers of deadly exotic diseases that threaten to sicken people and other animals in this country.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service special agents traced the creatures, worth as much as $400,000 on the black market, to Chye, described as a smooth-talking kingpin in the world of animal smuggling. They nabbed him within hours of his arrival in Orlando, where he planned to set up a temporary headquarters.

From his compound in Singapore, authorities say, Chye profited as a broker of rare animals to dealers and individual buyers.

The insatiable demand for exotic pets, from parrots and macaws to pythons and iguanas, is driving the wildlife trade, estimated at $6 billion a year. At the high end are collectors willing to pay thousands of dollars for exceptionally rare animals, like Komodo dragons for $30,000 each and plowshare tortoises at $25,000 each. At the other end are teenagers and apartment dwellers who spend $30 to $75 for animals at pet stores and exotic animal shows and on the Internet.

"Anything that walks, creeps, crawls or flies has a price on its head," says Mike Elkins, deputy assistant law enforcement supervisor for the Fish & Wildlife Service in Atlanta. Trade in endangered animals is generally illegal under a 30-year-old treaty signed by the United States and 162 other countries. But the treaty is little match for the huge profits and minimal risks that lure smugglers -- whose contraband most often ends up in the United States.

And most often ends up dead. Authorities figure that as many as 75 percent of the smuggled creatures die on their long, hot, airless journey.

Interpol, the international police agency, says wildlife smuggling is so pervasive on a global scale, it is surpassed only by the black market in drugs. In many areas, organized gangs, including South American drug cartels and the Russian mafia, have added wildlife smuggling to their other illegitimate activities.

Putting major traffickers like Chye out of business puts a dent in the illicit trade, but perhaps only temporarily, say wildlife authorities. Other traffickers are eager to fill the void, using a variety of ruthless schemes to get endangered wildlife into the hands of dealers, collectors and exotic pet fanciers.

Stopping the smugglers in this country is an overwhelming task, Elkins says, since only 92 federal wildlife inspectors are assigned to airports and border crossings nationwide. And preventing the extinction of some species may be impossible.

"With the loss of habitat and the illegal smuggling of animals for profit and gain, there are many animals that are . . . going to go extinct," says Ernest Mayer, head of special operations for the Fish & Wildlife Service. "So I think from that standpoint we're losing."

First U.S. stop: Miami

Most of the black market animals entering the United States arrive by air.

The hot spot in the Southeast is Miami International, with its connections to South America. Opening cartons there, the airport's five wildlife inspectors routinely find snakes, lizards, tortoises, parrots -- and sometimes baby orangutans.

In an airport warehouse, inspector Jim Stinebaugh cautiously slits open a large box labeled "Live Frogs."

"No matter how many times you do this, you get a little antsy," he says. Poisonous snakes are sometimes found inside shipments.

In this box, Stinebaugh finds layer upon layer of plastic foam cups with lids. Each holds a thumb-size frog, snatched from the wild and shipped from the South American country of Suriname.

Another box holds dozens of clear plastic containers, each harboring a crawly rose-haired tarantula spider from Chile. "They'll spray you with hairs if you make them mad," Stinebaugh warns.

This time the animals are legal, he concludes -- headed for pet shops in the United States and Canada.

As best he can, he checks to see if any endangered species are stashed with the legal animals, a common ploy of wildlife smugglers.

He is mindful that one smuggling tactic is to pile bags containing water monitors -- aggressive lizards that can be shipped legally -- atop an endangered animal at the bottom of a crate. The smugglers know that most inspectors are reluctant to shove around snapping lizards to look for contraband beneath.

One of the world's most notorious wildlife smugglers, Keng Liang "Anson" Wong, 44 -- released last month from a federal prison in California after serving six years -- used this method. From his private zoo in Malaysia, he shipped thousands of rare and endangered creatures, mostly reptiles, to collectors in the United States, Japan and Europe.

To fool airport customs and wildlife inspectors, he bound the rare animals with tape so they couldn't move and stuffed them in burlap bags stapled to the bottom of shipping crates. Many died from the harsh shipping conditions, but Wong stood to profit as long as some survived.

In Miami, Stinebaugh's boss, Vicky Vina, says that on a good day, inspectors there are able to peek inside about three in every 10 shipments.

"We get awfully busy," she says. "We often get 60 to 70 wildlife shipments through here in one day."

Scores of animals -- mostly reptiles -- were smuggled through Miami by Chye, Wong and others.

Not all smuggled animals come through cargo facilities. Airline passengers hide live creatures in their baggage and clothing. Miami's agents have found tiny marmoset monkeys under hats, parrot chicks and baby snakes in underwear, and little tortoises stuffed in baggy pants.

Once, when customs inspectors in the Miami terminal noticed a woman's bust wiggling, they found rare parrot chicks stuffed in her bra. More recently, a man's heavy, loose-fitting clothing was a tip-off -- he was trying to smuggle 44 birds through the airport by taping them inside toilet paper tubes and securing the tubes to his legs.

Sometimes the animals are simply stashed in suitcases.

In one Argentinian passenger's suitcase, Miami inspectors found 107 chaco tortoises, 102 red-footed tortoises, 76 tartaruga turtles, 20 red Tegu lizards, seven rainbow boa constrictors and five Argentine boa constrictors -- all barred from global trade.

"Smugglers use every little trick they can muster to stay one step ahead of us," says Jorge Picon, wildlife agent in charge at Miami. "It's a never-ending struggle."

In business since '97

Chye, a short, trim man whose dark horn-rimmed glasses give him a professorial look, acknowledged in court documents that he had bought, sold and traded reptiles -- legally and illegally -- since 1997.

"He had a strong interest in animals and at one point worked for National Geographic as a consultant," said his federal public defender, Stephen Langs. Chye made no statements in court, and Langs refused to let him be interviewed.

Prosecutors said he shipped hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of protected animals to dealers and collectors in Florida, Massachusetts, California and Washington state. Most were sent via FedEx, labeled as books, magazines, lamps or other merchandise.

One California collector said Chye sent him an emerald tree monitor, which grows as long as 34 inches, and a yellow boa constrictor in a shipment labeled as "microwave safe" plastic container samples. Both reptiles are protected.

In August 2002, according to court records, Chye, using the alias Jon Morelia, (Morelia is the genus name for carpet and diamond python snakes) met University of Central Florida business student Michael Barrera at the International Reptile Breeders Exposition in Daytona Beach. Barrera claimed to be an Internet reptile dealer.

He and Chye agreed to do business together. Chye, in a show of friendship, invited Barrera to Indonesia to go "reptile hunting."

Barrera was the eventual recipient of the odoriferous shipment of turtles, tortoises and monitor lizards that came through Memphis in January, touching off the investigation of Chye.

When confronted, Barrera told authorities about several previous illegal shipments between himself and Chye involving hundreds of endangered snakes, lizards and turtles. Several of the reptiles died en route. At one point, he said, Chye offered to send him Komodo dragons, one of the world's most endangered species.

Barrera has not been charged. He could not be reached for comment for this article. In court papers, he said he had known what he was doing was illegal and that he "had been stupid" to get involved with Morelia.

A collector in Washington state tipped off investigators that Chye and a business associate were flying from Bangkok, Thailand, to Orlando in June to set up a temporary smuggling operation.

The associate, Leong Tian Kum, 33, a Bangkok reptile dealer, was arrested with Chye shortly after they landed at Orlando International Airport.

Kum, aka "Bobby Lee," was charged with money laundering and illegally sending endangered animals to a Wisconsin dealer. Authorities said he shipped pancake tortoises from East Africa, Hermann's tortoises from the Mediterranean rim countries, and Borneo leaf turtles in FedEx packages -- labeled "native crafts."

Arrested in Waukesha, Wis., was Reid Turowski, 28, owner of Captive Bred Specialties, who was accused of illegally receiving the animals from Lum. Both men face more than 10 years in prison.

The dead zone

Many smugglers avoid live animals altogether. They traffic in dead animals, or their parts, fueling a black market that parallels the pet trade -- and adding to the threat to individual animals, species and ecosystems.

Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport receives relatively few live animals, though it gets plenty of illegal objects made from rare animals -- skins, shawls, carved ivory objects and the like.

When U.S. authorities find endangered or otherwise illegal animal parts at airports and border crossings, they are sent to the National Wildlife Property Repository near Denver, a facility that bears stark testimony to the size and breadth of this market.

Shelves are piled high with boots, wallets, purses, briefcases and coats made of the skin of elephants, caimans, cobras, leopards, jaguars and other animals. Bins sag with hair clips, combs and necklaces carved from sea turtle shells. Tons of confiscated elephant ivory occupy other bins. The "Asian Medicine Section" holds black bear gallbladders, dried tiger penises and powders and extracts made of tiger bones and black rhino horns.

Locked in a cabinet are more than 50 softer-than-silk "shahtoosh" shawls, many seized from an international smuggling ring. The shawls, worth $30,000 each on the black market, are made from the fine hair of endangered Tibetan antelopes, which must be killed before their hair can be harvested.

Though the warehouse is crammed with confiscated animal products, it's still just a holding facility. Most of the illegal merchandise will end up in schools or museums or being sold at auction.

"We're constantly turning over our inventory," says Special Agent in Charge Bernadette Atencio. "If we didn't, we'd be stacked up in no time."

Trade shows popular

By far the most lucrative side of the wildlife trade is live animals.

Nearly 7 million U.S. households have a pet bird, and 4 million have a pet snake, iguana or turtle, according to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association. Some of the interest comes from people who live in apartments or those with allergies to dogs and cats.

Particularly unusual animals, however, are attention getters and status symbols.

The fascination with exotic pets perhaps is most apparent at the more than 400 wild pet expos held around the country each year.

Typical of those gatherings is the Atlanta Reptile and Exotic Pet Show, held last month at the Gwinnett Gwinnett Civic & Cultural Center. Scores of visitors paid $7 apiece to get in, then stood in line at booth after booth to buy exotic pets.

A Brazilian rainbow boa, $175. A Goliath bird-eating tarantula, $100. A Bengal cat kitten, $400. A Moluccan cockatoo, $1,500. Emerald tree boa, $275. African spur-thigh tortoise, $225.

Authorities say Chye and other global wildlife dealers are regulars at some of the bigger shows, making valuable contacts and deals there. Most dealers are believed to be operating legally.

Most of the animals they offer for sale were likely bred legally in captivity, which authorities say avoids harm to wild populations -- but not in every case.

The animals may have been snatched illegally from the wild, a cheaper source of inventory for dealers.

The problem is determining if an animal is captive-bred or smuggled.

"Once an animal is smuggled in, it's difficult to determine if it's legal or illegal," says Tom Watts-Fitzgerald, a U.S. attorney who prosecutes smuggling cases in Miami. "Dealers claim their animals are captive-bred and legal.

"But if you go to a pet show or a store to buy an exotic pet, you really have no foolproof way of knowing if it's legal or not.

 

[drifter]

Anything that walks, creeps, crawls or flies has a price on its head

 

[Windsor]

Anything that walks, creeps, crawls or flies has a price on its head

Pretty interesting news about your friend and the others who were caught. As for anything that creeps, crawls or flies, main culprits are usually the Chinese as they eat them for "health" reasons.

Dogs, fish and birds are part of my life since school days. Just a hobby and to teach my kids to love animals. They have tortoise and hamsters too.

 

[drifter]

another big time animals trader is anson wong also one of my friends ....

The New Straits Times: An American-penned hardcover details how Malaysian Anson Wong, dubbed 'the most important person in the international reptile business', was nabbed in Mexico and also his alleged links with Malaysian officials, writes lizabeth John. It's a story of crime, wildlife smuggling and money. It stars flamboyant characters dripping with gold chains, driving luxury vehicles and politicians -- the smugglers who are as slippery as the rare reptiles they traffic across the globe for sums of money that beggar belief.

But what is so fascinating about The Lizard King or relevant here is the capture of one Malaysian reptile smuggler and his vast reach and influence.

Key agencies linked to the smuggler are the Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) and the Royal Malaysian Customs Department.

Perhilitan enforces the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) through checks, permits and quotas for the wildlife trade.

Customs controls what goods enter and exit at major entry points in the country.

Both agencies have responded to the links drawn between them and the smuggler in this recently published work of non-fiction by American lawyer and writer, Bryan Christy.

The 240-page hardcover that went on sale in Malaysia last month is dominated by the story of a cat-and-mouse chase.

It is the story of the Van Nostrands -- once the primary supplier of reptiles to pet stores and zoos around the world -- and the determined special agent Chip Bepler, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, who tries to nab them.

The father-son team of Ray and Mike Van Nostrand ran Strictly Reptiles and were known as the most notorious reptile smugglers in the United States .

At its height, the company occupied a 10,000 square-foot warehouse in Hollywood overflowing with a menagerie of reptiles.

It boasted a frog room, arachnid room, python rooms, a locked venomous room and even walk-in freezers in which dead snakes and spiders were kept for voodoo rituals.

With specimens like giant Aldabra tortoises priced at US$22,500 (RM78,000) a pair, the money was good.

But the real thrill lay in collecting the rare, the unique and the hardly-ever-seen.

One of the Van Nostrands' many suppliers was Malaysian wildlife trader Anson Wong.

The book describes Wong as "the most important person in the international reptile business" and "reptile smuggling's crown jewel".

The chapter "Fortress Malay-sia" tells of Wong's dealings with an undercover agent that leads to his arrest in Mexico City in 1998.

Wong was extradited to the US and in 2001, was sentenced in a US federal court in San Francisco to 71 months in prison for trafficking in rare and endangered wildlife.

It was dubbed one of the largest cases of illegal trade ever prosecuted in the US .

Drawing from legal documents, official investigation reports and interviews, Christy describes how Wong had laundered protected star tortoises by the hundreds though Malaysia and the Middle East .

Frilled dragons, native to New Guinea and Australia , turned up at the Miami International Airport accompanied by Malaysian paperwork.

Wong boasts about working things out with a high-level government official.

Christy also describes the awe of one human courier when he was received at the Penang airport and driven to Wong's office by a high-ranking Customs official.

And the book is peppered with Perhilitan officers.

Wong also boasted about bribing Cites officials to falsify permit details.

Perhilitan officers would sign a permit allowing the trade of a protected animal under the terms of the convention.

The convention ensures that international trade in wild plants and animals does not threaten their survival.

Quotes from recorded telephone conversations and from faxes and emails between Wong and the US agent who posed as a wildlife importer, tell how the former took advantage of loopholes in the law.

He would arrange for a fall guy to get arrested with smuggled wildlife and then buy the confiscated animals that are auctioned off by authorities, legally, under the law. All the while knowing he would be safe. As one quote reads: "I could sell a panda and nothing. As long as I'm here, I'm safe."

Obsessed with meaner, hotter creatures

As a second-grader, Bryan Christy brought a king snake to school for show-and-tell. "Kids gathered, naturally; teachers from other grades poked their heads into the classroom, older boys stopped me in the hallway; The principal called me to his office so he could look inside my pillowcase.

"I don't think I ever recovered from the celebrity I achieved simply for holding what other people were afraid of, what they had been taught was wrong," Christy writes in his book The Lizard King.

It seemed like reptiles were always treated as nature's outlaws and for this one-time lawyer and Fulbright scholar, a crime story about reptiles seemed like the perfect vehicle to tell a reptile story and make it interesting even for people who didn't like them.

This is what he achieved in The Lizard King -- opened a small but rare window into the world of reptile smuggling where a childhood fondness for creepy crawlies morphs into an adult obsession for bigger, meaner, rarer and hotter creatures.

And when he discovered the ingenuity of Mike Van Norstrand, a king of that wild universe, and the incredible effort of agent Chip Bepler, who strove to stop him, Christy knew he had a reptile thriller.

"When I found out how their relationship ended, I wanted to write a book to honour that story," he said.

So Christy sought out Van Nostrand, slowly befriending him and finally persuading him to open up about himself, his world and legal troubles.

Then one day, Van Nostrand instructed his lawyer to turn over six years' worth of legal files to Christy.

"As a lawyer, getting access to a criminal's files was an incredible gift.

"I got the files late in my work so it was also an additional way to confirm that all my facts were right."

It took Christy four years of research and three months of writing to realise The Lizard King. Dozens of official sources and countless meetings with every major character who played a part in the real-life version of the story added to the workload.

The response, he said, had been good in the conservation and wildlife trade communities.

That's no surprise when a book tells of turtles stuffed into suitcases and snakes smuggled in trousers, while painting a very human picture of crafty smugglers -- with insights into their childhood, families and obsessions.

The book isn't meant to judge.

"There are high walls between these two worlds. Midway into this book I realised I might be able to build a window.

"It made me realise the book might be important as well as entertaining and led me to ground it in history people might not know."

But the writer still thinks that illegal trafficking is a horrendous crime.

"There is not a country in the world that adequately polices illegal wildlife trade.

"By definition illegal trade is cross-border and there are no adequate resources or manpower devoted to it.

"Wildlife crime is crime and source countries and consumer countries need to treat it that way."

A work of fiction, says Wildlife Department

It's all fiction -- that's the response from the National Parks and Wildlife Department (Perhilitan) to some of the startling revelations in The Lizard King.

In a faxed response to the New Sunday Times, the department said it did not confer any immunity or special treatment to anyone in the wildlife trade and questioned the author's motives.

"Where the Wildlife and National Parks Department is concerned, this book is simply fiction.

"There is no reference or citation, thus its reliability and integrity is questionable," the fax read.

In the end notes, author Bryan Christy did list his sources.

The book was based on thousands of pages of telephone transcripts and investigative reports from the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

In response to our questions, Christy said conversations in quotations were taken verbatim from recorded telephone conversations.

Christy added he had access to agents across the country and had assistance from enforcement agencies in the Netherlands who helped in the US investigations.

Lead investigator Chip Bepler's personal notes were made available to Christy and the US attorney's office in Miami made its prosecutors available throughout South Florida where much of the story is based.

Christy said he met most of the major characters, including Anson Wong whom he interviewed last year. He described Wong as "very gracious".

Perhilitan said Wong carried out his business legally and in compliance with domestic laws.

"The key person (Wong) mentioned in the said book has been compounded and dealt with under the Protection of Wildlife Act 1972," the department said.

In a follow-up telephone conversation, a Perhilitan officer clarified that this was for previous offences and not the case which led to Wong's arrest in 1998.

On the disposal of confiscated animals, the department said it had been carried out in compliance with procedures.

On Malaysia being a conduit for the illegal wildlife trade, the department said: "Due to the strategic location surrounded by rich biodiversity countries, Malaysia is the best target used as transit point to smuggle animals ever since the illicit wildlife flourishing (sic)."

Meanwhile, the Customs Department said it would investigate the incident implicating one of its officers.

In an email response, head of the public relations unit, Hamzah Ahamad, assured that if at all true, it was an isolated case.

 

[drifter]

Pretty interesting news about your friend and the others who were caught. As for anything that creeps, crawls or flies, main culprits are usually the Chinese as they eat them for "health" reasons.

Dogs, fish and birds are part of my life since school days. Just a hobby and to teach my kids to love animals. They have tortoise and hamsters too.

nah..most of my friends sell to animals collector who really love animals ....as for selling cheap animals for food , its just an extra income ..

 

[Windsor]

another big time animals trader is anson wong also one of my friends ....

The New Straits Times: An American-penned hardcover details how Malaysian Anson Wong, dubbed 'the most important person in the international reptile business', was nabbed in Mexico and also his alleged links with Malaysian officials, writes lizabeth John. It's a story of crime, wildlife smuggling and money. It stars flamboyant characters dripping with gold chains, driving luxury vehicles and politicians -- the smugglers who are as slippery as the rare reptiles they traffic across the globe for sums of money that beggar belief.

But what is so fascinating about The Lizard King or relevant here is the capture of one Malaysian reptile smuggler and his vast reach and influence.

Key agencies linked to the smuggler are the Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) and the Royal Malaysian Customs Department.

Perhilitan enforces the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) through checks, permits and quotas for the wildlife trade.

Customs controls what goods enter and exit at major entry points in the country.

Both agencies have responded to the links drawn between them and the smuggler in this recently published work of non-fiction by American lawyer and writer, Bryan Christy.

The 240-page hardcover that went on sale in Malaysia last month is dominated by the story of a cat-and-mouse chase.

It is the story of the Van Nostrands -- once the primary supplier of reptiles to pet stores and zoos around the world -- and the determined special agent Chip Bepler, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, who tries to nab them.

The father-son team of Ray and Mike Van Nostrand ran Strictly Reptiles and were known as the most notorious reptile smugglers in the United States .

At its height, the company occupied a 10,000 square-foot warehouse in Hollywood overflowing with a menagerie of reptiles.

It boasted a frog room, arachnid room, python rooms, a locked venomous room and even walk-in freezers in which dead snakes and spiders were kept for voodoo rituals.

With specimens like giant Aldabra tortoises priced at US$22,500 (RM78,000) a pair, the money was good.

But the real thrill lay in collecting the rare, the unique and the hardly-ever-seen.

One of the Van Nostrands' many suppliers was Malaysian wildlife trader Anson Wong.

The book describes Wong as "the most important person in the international reptile business" and "reptile smuggling's crown jewel".

The chapter "Fortress Malay-sia" tells of Wong's dealings with an undercover agent that leads to his arrest in Mexico City in 1998.

Wong was extradited to the US and in 2001, was sentenced in a US federal court in San Francisco to 71 months in prison for trafficking in rare and endangered wildlife.

It was dubbed one of the largest cases of illegal trade ever prosecuted in the US .

Drawing from legal documents, official investigation reports and interviews, Christy describes how Wong had laundered protected star tortoises by the hundreds though Malaysia and the Middle East .

Frilled dragons, native to New Guinea and Australia , turned up at the Miami International Airport accompanied by Malaysian paperwork.

Wong boasts about working things out with a high-level government official.

Christy also describes the awe of one human courier when he was received at the Penang airport and driven to Wong's office by a high-ranking Customs official.

And the book is peppered with Perhilitan officers.

Wong also boasted about bribing Cites officials to falsify permit details.

Perhilitan officers would sign a permit allowing the trade of a protected animal under the terms of the convention.

The convention ensures that international trade in wild plants and animals does not threaten their survival.

Quotes from recorded telephone conversations and from faxes and emails between Wong and the US agent who posed as a wildlife importer, tell how the former took advantage of loopholes in the law.

He would arrange for a fall guy to get arrested with smuggled wildlife and then buy the confiscated animals that are auctioned off by authorities, legally, under the law. All the while knowing he would be safe. As one quote reads: "I could sell a panda and nothing. As long as I'm here, I'm safe."

Obsessed with meaner, hotter creatures

As a second-grader, Bryan Christy brought a king snake to school for show-and-tell. "Kids gathered, naturally; teachers from other grades poked their heads into the classroom, older boys stopped me in the hallway; The principal called me to his office so he could look inside my pillowcase.

"I don't think I ever recovered from the celebrity I achieved simply for holding what other people were afraid of, what they had been taught was wrong," Christy writes in his book The Lizard King.

It seemed like reptiles were always treated as nature's outlaws and for this one-time lawyer and Fulbright scholar, a crime story about reptiles seemed like the perfect vehicle to tell a reptile story and make it interesting even for people who didn't like them.

This is what he achieved in The Lizard King -- opened a small but rare window into the world of reptile smuggling where a childhood fondness for creepy crawlies morphs into an adult obsession for bigger, meaner, rarer and hotter creatures.

And when he discovered the ingenuity of Mike Van Norstrand, a king of that wild universe, and the incredible effort of agent Chip Bepler, who strove to stop him, Christy knew he had a reptile thriller.

"When I found out how their relationship ended, I wanted to write a book to honour that story," he said.

So Christy sought out Van Nostrand, slowly befriending him and finally persuading him to open up about himself, his world and legal troubles.

Then one day, Van Nostrand instructed his lawyer to turn over six years' worth of legal files to Christy.

"As a lawyer, getting access to a criminal's files was an incredible gift.

"I got the files late in my work so it was also an additional way to confirm that all my facts were right."

It took Christy four years of research and three months of writing to realise The Lizard King. Dozens of official sources and countless meetings with every major character who played a part in the real-life version of the story added to the workload.

The response, he said, had been good in the conservation and wildlife trade communities.

That's no surprise when a book tells of turtles stuffed into suitcases and snakes smuggled in trousers, while painting a very human picture of crafty smugglers -- with insights into their childhood, families and obsessions.

The book isn't meant to judge.

"There are high walls between these two worlds. Midway into this book I realised I might be able to build a window.

"It made me realise the book might be important as well as entertaining and led me to ground it in history people might not know."

But the writer still thinks that illegal trafficking is a horrendous crime.

"There is not a country in the world that adequately polices illegal wildlife trade.

"By definition illegal trade is cross-border and there are no adequate resources or manpower devoted to it.

"Wildlife crime is crime and source countries and consumer countries need to treat it that way."

A work of fiction, says Wildlife Department

It's all fiction -- that's the response from the National Parks and Wildlife Department (Perhilitan) to some of the startling revelations in The Lizard King.

In a faxed response to the New Sunday Times, the department said it did not confer any immunity or special treatment to anyone in the wildlife trade and questioned the author's motives.

"Where the Wildlife and National Parks Department is concerned, this book is simply fiction.

"There is no reference or citation, thus its reliability and integrity is questionable," the fax read.

In the end notes, author Bryan Christy did list his sources.

The book was based on thousands of pages of telephone transcripts and investigative reports from the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

In response to our questions, Christy said conversations in quotations were taken verbatim from recorded telephone conversations.

Christy added he had access to agents across the country and had assistance from enforcement agencies in the Netherlands who helped in the US investigations.

Lead investigator Chip Bepler's personal notes were made available to Christy and the US attorney's office in Miami made its prosecutors available throughout South Florida where much of the story is based.

Christy said he met most of the major characters, including Anson Wong whom he interviewed last year. He described Wong as "very gracious".

Perhilitan said Wong carried out his business legally and in compliance with domestic laws.

"The key person (Wong) mentioned in the said book has been compounded and dealt with under the Protection of Wildlife Act 1972," the department said.

In a follow-up telephone conversation, a Perhilitan officer clarified that this was for previous offences and not the case which led to Wong's arrest in 1998.

On the disposal of confiscated animals, the department said it had been carried out in compliance with procedures.

On Malaysia being a conduit for the illegal wildlife trade, the department said: "Due to the strategic location surrounded by rich biodiversity countries, Malaysia is the best target used as transit point to smuggle animals ever since the illicit wildlife flourishing (sic)."

Meanwhile, the Customs Department said it would investigate the incident implicating one of its officers.

In an email response, head of the public relations unit, Hamzah Ahamad, assured that if at all true, it was an isolated case.

Wow, I was totally taken aback by such revelations. I know some Perhilitan employees, one in Penang and te rest in Taman Negara. Opportunity lost

I even attended the wedding of one of them in Pahang amidst the two elephants that carried the bride and groom during the kenduri kahwin.

 

[drifter]

Wow, I was totally taken aback by such revelations. I know some Perhilitan employees, one in Penang and te rest in Taman Negara. Opportunity lost

I even attended the wedding of one of them in Pahang amidst the two elephants that carried the bride and groom during the kenduri kahwin.

before 911 ..i could send reptiles in boxes over to US ...in a good month i can make sin$100k ( no joke ) . you should start to contact your friends overseas now

 

[Windsor]

before 911 ..i could send reptiles in boxes over to US ...in a good month i can make sin$100k ( no joke ) . you should start to contact your friends overseas now

haha...being a noob, I won't know where to start even. Some fishes maybe but not reptiles or other wild animals. One of the most beautiful cats is the Clouded Leopard, but they are extremely rare.

Dammit, I inadvertantly lost all my websites yesterday when I accepted Firefox 5.0. Lost all my foxtabs links. Unable to find most of them as I usually erase history for reasons of privacy.