Couple sentenced for tiger trafficking

Calling their crimes "a cowardly thing," U.S. District Court Judge E. Richard Webber sentenced a Cape Girardeau animal park owner and his wife Monday for illegally trafficking four endangered tigers in 1998.

Todd H. Lantz, own-er of Lazy L Exotics, was sentenced to five months in prison, three years of probation upon release, and ordered to pay $5,000 to the Fish and Wild-life Foundation's Save the Tiger Fund. He pleaded guilty in February to conspiracy to violate the Lacey Act, a federal wildlife protection law.

Vicki L. Lantz will serve six months' home detention and five years of probation. She pleaded guilty to aiding in the illegal sale of the four tigers, a misdemeanor violation of the Endangered Species Act.

The government claimed that in February 1998, Todd Lantz bought four tigers and transported them to the 5H Ranch in Cape Girardeau, where the caged animals were shot. The tigers were sold for $4,000 and taken to Illinois, where their hides, meat and other parts were sold. After the killing, Vicki Lantz falsified federal documents to make the sale appear as a donation.

In reading his ruling, Webber said the couple, with others, had arranged the illegal sale of 14 tigers, two lions, two cougars and one liger (a tiger-lion hybrid).

The 18-month investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, named Operation Snow Plow, resulted in federal charges filed against 17 defendants in Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Florida, Michigan and Illinois.

Vicki Lantz said the sentences handed down Monday will not change her family's means of earning a living.

"We're in the animal business to stay," she said. "That's all we've ever done; it's all we know."

She is angry about the amount of attention paid to the couple's case.

"It's the media publicity of the whole thing that's gotten out of hand," Lantz said. "You're just getting one side of this story from the government, and that's not everything."

'Cold-blooded slaughter'

"I'm glad it's finally done," said Scott Flaherty, investigator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "It took a lot of long, hard, detailed work by a group of very few agents."

Flaherty said the agency's job isn't finished because a demand for exotic animals lingers.

"This was a cold-blooded slaughter, just to get them dead so they could go to the business of parting them up for those markets," he said of the killings. "It goes to show how much value we place on animals, especially exotic animals."

Flaherty was glad the case at least brought such crimes to the public's attention.

"What people don't realize is these animals end up in private hands," he said. "The motive of a lot of these roadside zoo and animal park owners is not always on the up and up."

Other guilty pleas

The Lantzes were among five people indicted in Missouri last November as a result of an undercover investigation by special agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The three others indicted include:

Timothy Rivers, owner of Animals in Motion Animal Park in Citra, Fla., pleaded guilty Aug. 13 to illegally selling leopards to a buyer in Illinois through Todd Lantz in August 1998 and is scheduled for sentencing Nov. 20 in Cape Girardeau.

Freddy Wilmouth, owner of Wild Wilderness Safari Park in Gentry, Ark., was sentenced in May to six months' home confinement, three years of probation and ordered to pay $10,000 restitution for his part in the sale of the four tigers.

Stoney Elam, former operator of Power House Wildlife Sanctuary in Fort Gibson, Okla., pleaded guilty in April to illegally selling two tigers and three leopards and falsifying federal documents. He is set to be sentenced Nov. 7 in St. Louis.

mwells@semissourian.com

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