A Malaysian man who sold a dozen black rhino and white rhino horns to a confidential source was sentenced to a year and a half in a U.S. prison Tuesday, federal prosecutors in New York said. Teo Boon Ching, known as the “Godfather,” had pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy to commit wildlife trafficking, the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan said in a statement.
“As long as you have cash, I can give you the goods in 1-2 days,” Ching, 58, told the confidential source during a meeting in Malaysia in 2019, according to prosecutors.
The Malaysia meetings lasted for two days, and during that time, Ching described himself as a “middleman” who buys rhino horns poached by co-conspirators in Africa and ships them to customers around the world, according to prosecutors. Ching also sent the source photos of rhino horns that were for sale.
Later that year, authorities directed the source to buy 12 rhino horns from Ching, which were delivered to the source in a suitcase. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lab confirmed two of the horns were from a black rhino, which the World Wildlife Fund considers to be critically endangered, and the other 10 horns were from white rhinos, which are not considered to be endangered but are instead “near threatened,” according to the group.
Ching was arrested in Thailand in 2022 and eventually extradited to the U.S. According to prosecutors, he conspired to traffic approximately 480 pounds of poached rhino horns worth about $2.1 million.
Disappointingly short prison sentence.
I suspect the short prison sentence is because he flipped on the people above him.
Very disappointing. Maybe horn for a horn?
Lucky guy can be back out in just 18 months and immediately begin causing irreparable harm to life on the planet again.
So two unique species that took billions of years to evolve are judged to be less valuable than two years of some pond scums life.
Return to monke when?
A death sentence for the animals and species involved.
Why not a life sentence for all the people involved?
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More years please. Many, many more years
One year per rhino
I’m fine with more years than that, but at least a year. I mean he had a dozen horns and he gets a year and a half? That’s insane.
Only 18 months? Poachers deserve life at minimum. Biodiversity is not coming back back after somebody fucks it up.
No kidding. Will this even discourage it?
Nope. For 2 million USD most people would happily risk 18 months in a nice American prison.
Don’t be disingenuous, American prisons are among the worst and THE worst in the 1st world.
18 months ain’t shit, but let’s not call them “nice” for any reason.
Poaching endangered species is abhorrent and I have little sympathy for whatever happens to those who drive those species towards extinction for personal gain.
That said, nothing in this article (or another one I read) makes it sound like this guy is a US citizen, ever visited the US, or even shipped illegal products into the US. Shouldn’t Thailand or some world court be prosecuting him? This makes us sound like we think the US has jurisdiction over anyone in the world who would break our laws.
The CNN article says that he was selling horns to people in Manhattan. Jurisdiction for international crimes is complicated and I don’t know anything about it really, but my guess is that even if he never personally visited the States, he’s still considered to have committed crimes there – if a drug smuggler used a catapult to launch packages of drugs across the border, it would make sense for them to be charged in the US even if they didn’t ever step foot on American soil.
Fair enough. That is definitely different in my eyes. If he’s knowingly sending illegal goods into the US, he is definitely breaking US law. It is far more reasonable to ask an extradition partner to scoop him up.
destroying nature is a universal crime. Who gives a shit so long as they get stopped.
Agreed! Who gives a shit about any laws anywhere as long as we feel we’re doing the moral thing!
Yes actually. Law is meant to serve just ends not be viewed as justice itself.
It is important to be keep watch for government excess, even if we happen to agree with that specific example.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. ― H.L. Mencken
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Teo Boon Ching, known as the “Godfather,” had pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy to commit wildlife trafficking, the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan said in a statement.
“As long as you have cash, I can give you the goods in 1-2 days,” Ching, 58, told the confidential source during a meeting in Malaysia in 2019, according to prosecutors.
The Malaysia meetings lasted for two days, and during that time, Ching described himself as a “middleman” who buys rhino horns poached by co-conspirators in Africa and ships them to customers around the world, according to prosecutors.
According to prosecutors, he conspired to traffic approximately 480 pounds of poached rhino horns worth about $2.1 million.
“Wildlife trafficking is a serious threat to the natural resources and the ecological heritage shared by communities across the globe, enriching poachers responsible for the senseless illegal slaughter of numerous endangered rhinoceros and furthering the market for these illicit products,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
In parts of Asia, the horns are thought to have unproven, powerful medicinal properties and at one point they were more expensive than cocaine in Vietnam.
The original article contains 405 words, the summary contains 189 words. Saved 53%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
