This image provided by the County Sheriff’s Office in Conway, SC, shows Bhagavan “Doctor” Adel, who was arrested by the FBI on Friday, June 3, 2022, on federal money laundering charges. The protagonist of “Tiger King” Bhagavan “Doc” Antle has been charged with buying or selling endangered lemurs, cheetahs and chimpanzees without proper bureaucracy, federal prosecutors in South Carolina said Thursday. The latest allegations go beyond the allegations of money laundering, with authorities saying Antle tried to hide more than half a million dollars in a smuggling operation across the Mexican border into the United States. Antle stars in “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness,” a 2020 Netflix mini-documentary series focused on tiger breeders and private zoo operators in the United States. ill-treated and convicted of plotting to assassinate an opponent, Carole Baskin. U.S. Endangered Species Act requires permission to purchase or move any endangered species into captivity, and prosecutors say Antle, two of his employees and owners of safari tours in Texas and California, violated the law. Charles Sammut, pilot of the Vision Quest Ranch in Salians, California, exchanged two red lemurs with Antle in June 2018, federal prosecutors said. The allegations in the indictment are “full of misinformation,” Sammut told the Associated Press by telephone Thursday. Sammut said he would not specify what was wrong because he had a criminal case pending, but added that he believed the problems “would clear up soon”. Antle was also charged with exchanging a chimpanzee with Franklin Drive Through Safari in Franklin, Texas. Owner Jason Clay did not return a text message and a lawyer was not on the court records. Sammut, 61, and Clay, 42, are charged with trafficking wildlife and violating the endangered species law. If convicted, they face up to five years in prison. The court documents show that Antle, 62, and Myrtle Beach Safari employee Meredith Bybee also bought or sold two young cheetahs, although details of who else was involved in the alleged transaction were not available in federal indictments. Antle’s lawyers did not respond to an email on Thursday, and court records do not mention Bybee, a 51-year-old lawyer. Antle and another employee, Andrew Jon Sawyer, 52, were charged earlier in June with money laundering. Prosecutors said the men wrote $ 505,000 checks that were supposed to be for construction work on the Myrtle Beach Safari, but were in fact payments to help smuggle people from Mexico to the United States. Antle tried to hide the plan by inflating the numbers of tourists in his 50-acre (20-hectare) tropical shelter, prosecutors said. Prosecutors also said he had previously used bulk cash receipts to buy animals for which he could not use checks. Animal rights activists have long accused Antle of abusing lions and other wild animals. He was charged in Virginia in 2020 with animal abuse and wildlife trafficking. In Virginia, Antle faces two counts of trafficking in wildlife and conspiracy to commit trafficking in wildlife, as well as 13 counts of conspiracy to commit a law offense on endangered species and animal cruelty related to lion trafficking. These charges are expected to be heard next month. Antle has a history of recorded violations dating back to 1989, when he was fined by the US Department of Agriculture for abandoning deer and peacocks at his Virginia Zoo. Over the years, it has more than 35 USDA animal abuse violations.
