Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers, and Skulduggery by Jennie Erin Smith

Author:Jennie Erin Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Animal Dealers - United States, Reptile Trade, Anecdotes, United States, Rare Reptiles, Reptile Trade - United States, Animal Dealers
ISBN: 9780307381477
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2011-01-03T23:00:00+00:00

A CANAL ran adjacent to the house Dwayne Cunningham and Hank Molt shared. Molt liked spending his evenings on the porch, drinking beer and listening to the alligators bellowing in the canal. One night Molt was sitting on the porch when “I see these guys with binoculars in the driveway across from me, looking around,” he said. “Then they pull into our driveway.” Vance Eaddy, a special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, introduced himself and asked, politely enough, if he could take a walk through the house. Eaddy seemed fixated on a large birdcage behind the house, half shaded with tarps, that housed some African chameleons, smallish green lizards that, from a distance, looked a little like Fiji iguanas. Cunningham wouldn’t let him near it.

A grand jury had convened in the Crutchfield case. Molt and Cunningham received subpoenas shortly after Eaddy’s visit, instructing them to bring to the Tampa courthouse the green lizards in their yard. By the date the two were scheduled to testify, though, the agents had already determined that the lizards weren’t Fiji iguanas after all. Don’t bother with the lizards, they instructed Molt and Cunningham, who would have none of it. After making sure to notify the TV news, they loaded the cage full of chameleons into a car, then hauled them, with great feigned effort, up the courthouse steps.

Back in Lake Panasoffkee, Crutchfield bought beer and threw a little party. “He thought it was great that we made assholes of the Feds,” Molt said. “He was absolutely sure he was gonna win.”

Crutchfield’s enterprise, meanwhile, was quickly unraveling. Jack Constantine pulled out of the business partnership, leaving Crutchfield heavily in debt. Employee paychecks bounced. Dwayne Cunningham quit. Hoping to avoid another subpoena or worse, Molt departed for Philadelphia, promising he’d be back. Crutchfield hoped it would be a good long while.

Federal agents were coming around Lake Panasoffkee so much that they started lunching at Catfish Johnny’s.

On November 6, 1991, Tom Crutchfield, Penny Crutchfield, and Anson Wong were indicted for conspiring to violate the Endangered Species Act and CITES. Wong elected to blow the whole thing off, understandably. Malaysia wasn’t going to extradite him over lizards.

Crutchfield decided that he and Penny would fight the charges with every cent they had. Molt thought Crutchfield was out of his mind. “With a case like that, you either did it or didn’t do it, and if you did it you cut your losses and make a deal,” said Molt, who had some experience in these matters. “But there was nobody around him with a brain.”

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