‘Tiger King’ Star Used His Business to Launder Human Smuggling Money: DOJ

Tiger King star Bhagavan “Doc” Antle has been charged with federal income laundering crimes involving hard cash that allegedly came from an operation to smuggle unlawful immigrants from Mexico to the U.S., the Office of Justice (DOJ) reported Monday.

Antle, a controversial wild animal coach who owns the Myrtle Seaside Safari in South Carolina, was arrested by the FBI on Friday. 1 of his employees and organization associates, Omar Sawyer, was also taken into custody.

Antle was featured in the well-liked 2020 Netflix documentary sequence that uncovered abuse inside of private zoo functions and the unique pet trade. The collection focused largely on Oklahoma zoo operator Joe Exotic, who has been accused of mistreating animals and was convicted in a prison plot to eliminate his enemy, Carole Baskin.

The DOJ said Tuesday that around the past four months, Antle and Sawyer laundered $505,000 in dollars they thought to be the proceeds of a plot to smuggle unlawful immigrants across the Southern border.

The two carried our their operation by offering checks from two separate enterprises that falsely claimed they were being remitted for building work executed at the Myrtle Seashore Safari, according to the DOJ. In truth, the checks were being a way to make it possible for the recipients to seem to have genuine earnings, and in trade, Antle and Sawyer been given a 15 percent price of all laundered cash.

“The criticism alleges that Antle talked about his approach to conceal the cash he acquired by inflating tourist figures at the Myrtle Beach Safari, and that in the previous he had applied bulk cash receipts to acquire animals for which he could not use checks,” the DOJ extra in an announcement.

Antle and Sawyer are at this time getting detained at the J. Reuben Extensive Detention Centre in Conway, South Carolina, and now confront a utmost of 20 yrs in federal jail.

This does not mark the very first time Antle has confronted criminal expenses. The 62-12 months-old is also going through two felony counts of wildlife trafficking and conspiracy to wildlife trafficking expenses, as properly as 13 misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to violate the Endangered Species Act and animal cruelty rates tied to trafficking lion cubs, in accordance to the Connected Push.

A spokesperson for Folks for the Ethical Cure of Animal (PETA), which has lengthy condemned Antle’s remedy of animals, instructed the news outlet earlier this 7 days that the fees from him are “fitting.”

“It is really fitting that ‘Doc’ Antle is behind bars soon after yrs of locking up the endangered animals he works by using in tawdry image ops. His lawful woes are mounting,” mentioned Debbie Metzler, associate director of PETA’s Captive Animal Legislation Enforcement division.