Doc Antle of ‘Tiger King’ has been convicted of animal trafficking
The owner of a South Carolina animal park, who was featured in the popular Netflix documentary “Tiger King,” was convicted last week in Virginia of wildlife trafficking charges, prosecutors announced.
Bhagavan Antle, better known as Doc Antle, was charged in October 2020 with illegally purchasing endangered lion cubs in Virginia to be displayed at the park, Myrtle Beach Safari, along with nine animal cruelty charges. A Virginia jury convicted him on Friday of two counts of wildlife trafficking and two counts of conspiracy to commit wildlife trafficking, prosecutors said. Mr. Antle was acquitted of all felony charges he faced.
Any crime is punishable by up to five years in prison, according to state law. Mr Antle will be sentenced on September 14.
The daughters of Mr. Antle, Tawny Antle and Tilakam Watterson, who were also charged with animal cruelty, were acquitted of all charges.
Mr. Antle was a regular on “Tiger King,” the hit 2020 series that gave Americans quarantined during the pandemic an intimate look at the underbelly of the United States’ “big cat” trade.
The show’s eccentric star, Joseph Maldonado-Passage, better known as Joe Exotic, is serving a 21-year sentence in federal prison for murder-for-hire against Carole Baskin, an animal rights activist. She criticized Mr. Maldonado-Passage’s treatment of animals at his Oklahoma zoo and appeared on the Netflix show.
Mr. Antle, who is currently charged with money laundering in a separate federal lawsuit in South Carolina, denied “any act or conduct that could ever be considered ‘animal cruelty’,” in a statement when the Virginia allegations were made. announced in 2020.
Jason Miyares, the attorney general, said in a press release that the jury’s decision “sent a signal that Virginia does not tolerate the wildlife trade.”
Virginia law allows the trade of endangered wildlife, including lions, “for zoological, educational, or scientific purposes” and for “conservation purposes”, only with special permission from a state board.
The lawyer of Mr. Antle, Erin Harrigan, called the jury’s decision to award Mr. not to convict Antle under the felony charges “a major victory against false allegations of animal cruelty.” Ms. Harrigan said the offenses her client was convicted of “amount to failure to obtain a permit for otherwise fully legal activities”, calling them “paperwork violations”.
The Attorney General’s Office, then headed by Mark R. Herring, sued Mr. Antle in 2020 after a months-long investigation into Mr. Antle’s ties to a Virginia-based zoo owner, Keith A. Wilson, who was also charged with wildlife trafficking.
An online court database showed on Wednesday that Mr. Wilson was still open.