Parrot smuggling
Hesperia, CA (US)Incident Date: Tuesday, May 10, 2005
County: San Bernardino
Disposition: Convicted
Defendants/Suspects:
» Juan Gonzales-Villavicencio
» Corrina Leanna Conn
A Hesperia resident was sentenced to six months in a halfway house and home detention for smuggling into the country hundreds of wild parrots from Mexico and Central and South America.
Another Hesperia resident received two months of home detention for her role in bringing the birds into the country, U.S. Attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek said.
Juan Gonzalez-Villavicencio pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to smuggle protected wildlife into the United States and to making false statements to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Corrina Leanna Conn pled guilty to one count of making a false statement to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Gonzalez-Villavicencio was sentenced to spend six months in a community correction center - basically a half-way house - then three more months in home detention, Mrozek said. He also received three years probation.
Conn was sentenced to two months home detention, Mrozek said. Both will share a $2,500 fine.
Some of the birds smuggled into the U.S. were infected with Exotic Newcastle Disease, a highly contagious and nearly always fatal viral infection that can affect all birds.
An outbreak of the disease in the fall of 2002 cost millions of dollars to fight and caused the destruction of more than 3 million chickens in California, Arizona and Nevada.
In 1971, a major outbreak infected nearly 12 million birds in Southern California and threatened the country's entire domestic poultry and egg supply, the Justice Department said.
Gonzalez-Villavicencio had been convicted in 1999 for smuggling birds and spent six months in federal prison.
After that conviction he recruited Conn who made 30 trips from abroad to smuggle the birds. The birds were sold at the Macklin Swap Meet in Ontario for up to $500 each. References |
