A man repeatedly caught trying to smuggle finches from Guyana into New York for birdsong competitions was sentenced to a year and a day in prison.
“I’m going to stay away from the birds,” Ali pledged in a video he submitted to the court, “because it’s trouble.”
Ali, 62, pleaded guilty last summer to conspiring to import wildlife illegally. He was stopped at John F. Kennedy Airport in January 2022 with two packs of hair curlers that smugglers use to slip the small birds past customs officials. He was previously arrested in 2018 carrying finch-stuffed hair curlers in his socks at JFK, authorities said. In that case, he pleaded guilty to smuggling and was sentenced to two years’ probation and a $7,800 fine.
Songbird competitions have been a pastime in the Caribbean for centuries. Aficionados judge the animals on such factors as how many times they chirp or sing. But with the birds sometimes fetching thousands of dollars, the contests have fed wildlife trafficking that
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