Joseph Maldonado-Passage, better known as “Joe Exotic,” used his Oklahoma menagerie to become of the nation’s biggest tiger dealers.
An Oklahoma zookeeper and big cat dealer was sentenced Wednesday to 22 years in federal prison for plotting to have a rival murdered and for more than a dozen wildlife violations, including the killing of five tigers., was convicted in April on 19 federal charges that brought an end to a two-decade career as a zoo owner, exotic cat breeder, traveling showman, TV host and aspiring politician.
Maldonado-Passage’s week-long trial was a highly unusual federal prosecution of endangered species violations involving captive animals and the first related to captive tigers. It exposed basic gaps in oversight of large, dangerous predators that remain spottily tracked. In an interview last year with The Washington Post and in court testimony, Maldonado-Passage said he was never serious about killing the Florida sanctuary owner, Carole Baskin, and denied he had illegally sold tigers. The five tigers he fatally shot and buried at the zoo, he told the court, were “euthanized” because they were unwell. A federal forensic pathologist who examined the animals’ carcasses testified that all seemed healthy.
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