Tiger King subject Bhagavan “Doc” Antle is facing multiple years behind bars after he pleaded guilty to federal wildlife trafficking charges. Antle, 63, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to violate the Lacey Act and a conspiracy to launder money, the United States Department of Justice said in a news release Monday. In June, a jury acquitted Antle of five counts of animal cruelty.
Antle is a wild animal trainer and the owner and operator of the Myrtle Beach Safari, which is also known as The Institute for Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, or T.I.G.E.R. He also heads the Rare Species Fund, a nonprofit organization registered in South Carolina. He rose to fame with the March 2020 release of Netflix’s Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.
Videos by PopCulture.com
According to prosecutors, Antle conspired to violate the Lacey Act which prohibits trafficking of illegally taken wildlife, fish or plants, between September 2018 and May 2020 when he directed the sale of two cheetah cubs, two lion cubs, two tigers, and one juvenile chimpanzee. The Department of Justice said that Antle used “bulk cash payments to hide the transactions and falsified paperwork to show non-commercial transfers entirely within one state.” The DOJ added that Antle “requested that payments for endangered species be made to his nonprofit so they could appear as ‘donations.’”
“The defendant held himself out as a conservationist, yet repeatedly violated laws protecting endangered animals and then tried to cover up those violations,” Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division said in a statement. “This prosecution demonstrates our commitment to combatting illegal trafficking, which threatens the survival of endangered animals.”
Investigators also found evidence that Antle and a co-conspirator laundered money between February and April 2022. The crime occurred when Antle and a co-conspirator “conducted financial transactions with cash they believed was obtained from transporting and harboring illegal aliens.” The news release added that “to conceal and disguise the nature of the illegal cash, Antle and his coconspirator would take the cash they received and deposit it into bank accounts they controlled. They would then write a check to the individual that had provided the cash after taking a 15% fee per transaction.”
U.S. District Judge Joseph Dawson III for the District of South Carolina, who accepted Antle’s guilty plea, will sentence Antle after receiving and reviewing a sentencing report prepared by the U.S. Probation Office. The wild animal trainer faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and three years of supervised release for each count.
