“Tiger King ”star Doc Antle sentenced to year in prison for animal trafficking, must forfeit 3 chimpanzees

Another Tiger King star has been sentenced to time behind bars.

Bhagavan Mahamayavi "Doc" Antle, born Kevin Antle, who was featured on season one of the viral Netflix docuseries, received a 12-month prison sentence on Tuesday. He was previouslyconvicted in 2023on four felony counts of wildlife trafficking

The Department of Justice stated in an official release that Antle pled guilty to a conspiracy to violate the Lacey Act, a federal conservation law that prohibits the purchase, sale, and transportation of wildlife acquired through illegal means. Chimpanzees, cheetahs, lions, and tigers were among the animals Antle illegally trafficked.

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Antle also pled guilty to conspiring to launder more than $500,000 in what he believed was a scheme to illegally smuggle migrants from Mexico across the border into the United States. In addition to his prison time, Antle has been ordered to pay a $55,000 fine as well as $197,000 in restitution to the government, serve three years of supervised release, and forfeit three chimpanzees that were illegally sold to him.

Per the DOJ release, Antle employed several schemes cover up his illegal trafficking operation, including funneling payments as donations through a non-profit, consolidating transactions in bulk, creating false paperwork, and writing checks for construction services on his South Carolina wildlife preserve, Myrtle Beach Safari.

As founder and director of both Myrtle Beach Safari and the "conservationist group" The Institute for Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (T.I.G.E.R.S.), Antle was featured on the first season of Tiger King, a 2020 Netflix docuseries which chronicled a web of enmity and competition that connected various big cat keepers around the country. He then became the primary subject of the series' third and most recent season, Tiger King: The Doc Antle Story.

The primary subject of Tiger King's first season, Joseph "Joe Exotic" Maldonado, was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2020 on 19 federal charges, including animal abuse and attempted murder for hire. In 2022, the DOJ enacted a consent decree that permanently prohibited Jeffrey and Lauren Lowe, two more conservationists featured on Tiger King, from ever exhibiting animals again.

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Douglas Ault, Assistant Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Office of Law Enforcement stated in today's release regarding Antle's sentence, "This case underscores the grave criminal threat posed by wildlife traffickers who not only exploit vulnerable species for profit but also use sophisticated money laundering tactics to conceal their crimes."

Netflix Bhagavan 'Doc' Antle on 'Tiger King'

Antle wasn't the only individual targeted in this recent investigation. Two co-defendants were named in the case, and both have been sentenced for their parts in either the Lacey Act violation or the money laundering conspiracy.

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An individual named Andrew Sawyer was recently sentenced to two years of probation including eight months of home detention for his role in Antle's laundering plot. He has been ordered to forfeit nearly $185,000 and a chimpanzee to the government.

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The other co-defendant, Jason Clay, was found to have illegally sold a chimpanzee to Antle in exchange for $200,000 in cash and a juvenile gibbon.He was sentenced to four months in prison, four months of home confinement, and has been ordered to pay a $4,000 fine into the Lacey Act Reward Fund.

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