Beleaguered zoo owner Joseph “Joe Exotic” Maldonado-Passage, subject of Netflix’s hit documentary series Tiger King, has now suffered the indignity of rival Carole Baskin gaining control of what was once his zoo.
Baskin, a self-styled conservationist and owner of the Big Cat Rescue facility in Hillsborough County, Florida, has been given control of the Wynnewood, Oklahoma, premises by courts, after Maldonado-Passage failed to pay her US$1 million in copyright and trademark suits.
Maldonado-Passage, is in prison, having been found guilty of 17 counts of animal abuse and a murder-for-hire plot against Baskin.
Photo: AFP / NETFLIX
He was sentenced to 22 years.
Until the judgement, the zoo was owned by Jeff Lowe, a rival turned business associate, and Maldonado-Passage’s mother, Shirley Schreibvogel.
Baskin sued, claiming that the zoo had been fraudulently transferred to the pair to avoid it being seized by Maldonado-Passage’s creditors, herself included, a claim upheld in court.
Baskin had also previously sued Maldonado-Passage for trademark and copyright infringement for use of her company’s logo and images.
According to court documents, Lowe has 120 days to vacate the zoo, which he had renamed Tiger King Park, and to remove all animals.
Subtitled “Murder, Mayhem and Madness,” Tiger King has been a huge hit for Netflix since its release in March, with the notoriously cagey streaming giant revealing in April that the show had been watched by 64 million households.
The stranger-than-fiction series also made cult figures of Maldonado-Passage and Baskin, who has been subject to an array of unsubstantiated claims that she murdered her husband Jack “Don” Lewis, and fed him to her beloved big cats — accusations Baskin denied in the show.
Such is the cultural effect of the series, that Nicolas Cage has been signed up to portray Maldonado-Passage in an upcoming TV miniseries.
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