Oxnard man smuggled baby crocodiles, among 1,700 reptiles, gets 5 years

An Oxnard man has been sentenced to more than five years in prison for smuggling at least 1,700 reptiles worth more than $739,000 into the U.S. over six years, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday.

The animals, including baby crocodiles and Yucatán box turtles, were bought and sold over social media and came from Mexico, Hong Kong and elsewhere, an investigation led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service revealed.

From January 2016 to February 2022, Perez and co-conspirators brought in wild animals without the permits required by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora — and without declaring them, the Justice Department said.

In August 2022, Jose Manuel Perez pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of smuggling goods into the country and one count of wildlife trafficking.

The animals smuggled from Mexico were advertised on social media, with defendants posting photos and videos of the reptiles being captured in the wild.

People working with Perez would collect the reptiles including Mexican box turtles and Mexican beaded lizards, at from an airport in Ciudad Juárez, then move them by car over the border to El Paso.

According to federal authorities, Perez paid people a “crossing fee” each time they traversed the border. Payment depended on how many animals they trafficked, the size of the package and the level of risk they faced.

Sometimes Perez and another person would traveled to Mexico to buy animals taken from the wild to smuggle into the U.S. Once shipped, they were transported to Perez’s home, in Missouri and then California after he moved there.

When the sentence came down, Perez was already serving nine years for felony possession of firearms. Due to convictions in Ventura County Superior Court for “street terrorism” and assault with a deadly weapon, he is not allowed to have firearms, the department said.

According to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, illegal wildlife trafficking is the second-largest threat to species after habitat loss and the world’s fourth-most-lucrative trafficking industry.

“Illegal wildlife trafficking not only diminishes the populations of targeted wildlife species, it also impacts related species, their interconnected ecosystem, local and global economies, and has the potential to impact the health of people through zoonotic disease transmission,” the alliance says on its website.

Reptiles get caught in the fray. Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced that a Daly City man suspected of purchasing and exporting hundreds of poached turtles from Florida was facing federal wildlife trafficking charges.

The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of California and a section of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, along with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations, assisted federal wildlife officials with the investigation into Perez’s dealings. The case was prosecuted in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.