Lifestyle
Man charged with smuggling pythons in his pants at US border
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A New York Metropolis man has been charged with smuggling three Burmese pythons in his pants at a U.S-Canadian border crossing.
Calvin Bautista, 36, is accused of bringing the hidden snakes on a bus that crossed into northern New York on July 15, 2018. Importation of Burmese pythons is regulated by a global treaty and by federal rules itemizing them as “injurious to human beings.”
Bautista, of Queens, was arraigned Tuesday in Albany on the federal smuggling cost and launched pending trial, in accordance with a information launch from the workplace of U.S. Lawyer Carla B. Freedman.
An e mail in search of remark was despatched to Bautista’s lawyer.
The cost carries the potential for a most sentence of 20 years in jail and a high-quality as excessive as $250,000, in accordance with federal prosecutors.
The Burmese python, one of many world’s largest snakes, is taken into account a weak species in its native Asia and is invasive in Florida, the place it threatens native animals.