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Men charged for concealing leopards, birds, bulbs

Long before there were snakes on a plane, there were leopards in a carry-on and monkeys down a pair of pants, according to a federal indictment that was handed down in Southern California on Monday.

Chris Mulloy, a 45-year-old Palm Springs man, was arrested on charges related to the smuggling of two Asian leopards into the Los Angeles International Airport in 2002 after he returned from Asia.

According to the indictment, Mulloy came into the US with concealed leopards and passed them off to his sister, Darlah Kaye Mulloy, who was also named in the indictment, with the goal of getting them out of the airport undetected.

When questioned by officials from the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, Mulloy said he possessed no animals, even though he "well knew that statement was false, in that [the] defendant knew that he possessed two protected Asian leopard cats (Prionailurus bengalensis) when he entered the United States," according to the indictment.

One of the cats is now living in Orange Country and the other lives in Texas.

Mulloy's traveling companion, Robert Cusack, was not, initially, as lucky.

Federal agents were tipped off to some unusual happenings when large birds of paradise came flying out of his luggage, and it was soon revealed that Cusack had other smuggled wildlife and fauna, including more birds, which had been stuffed into women's stockings, and 50 rare orchid bulbs.

Most notably, as Monday's indictment recalled, Cusack had somehow managed to conceal two lesser slow lorises, also known as pygmy monkeys, in his underwear.

"These two guys were very close," said Joseph Johns, an assistant at the US attorney's office, "and they were on a wildlife collecting trip and one of them was unlucky and sent through secondary inspection."

Cusack was subsequently prosecuted and spent six months in jail. He had to pay fines and assume responsibility for the care and feeding of all of his smuggled monkeys.

But it was only recently that an investigation ensued into Mulloy's pets, aided in part by information provided by Cusack, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the US Attorney's Office in Los Angeles.

In federal court in Los Angeles on Monday, Mulloy was released on US$20,000 bond, ordered to surrender his passport and denied his request for a public defender. His arraignment was set for next Monday.

Johns said that wildlife smuggling was the third most common black market in the US, behind narcotics and arms.

"It is unfortunately an all-too-common incident in this country," he said.

And even the method of concealment was not unprecedented. In 1997 snakes were found in the pants of a man by border control agents who saw his khakis moving in an unusual manner.
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