Illegal monkey sale on Craigslist sends Houston woman to prison
HOUSTON - A 21-year-old woman will spend the next 15 months in federal prison after being sentenced for selling wildlife over Craigslist, in violation of the Lacey Act, according to U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani.
Savannah Nicole Valdez pled guilty to the charge back in February.
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According to a release, the court considered that Valdez was previously sentenced to two years of supervised released for smuggling a monkey into the United States and high-speed flight from an immigration checkpoint. The court revoked her supervised release in that case, and received another month to run consecutively with the prison term.
"When Savannah Valdez sold a Mexican spider monkey, she contributed to endangering a species," said Hamdani. "As the court heard today, those who traffic in infant spider monkeys shoot the mothers first and then pull the infants from their mother’s dead bodies before throwing them into cages for transport. Valdez’s actions helped sustain an illicit market that encouraged the needless death and suffering of endangered animals. Thankfully, now she will have to spend time in a cage of her making - a prison cell."
In summer 2023, authorities discovered several advertisements posted to Craigslist offering exotic birds for sale, including keel-billed toucans and yellow-headed amazon parrots. These are federally protected under the Endangered Species Act. Law enforcement identified the personal cell phone number of Valdez during the initial investigation. They found the contact number listed for the animals was, in fact, the same.
The subsequent undercover operation involved the sale of two keel-billed toucans and a Mexican spider monkey. On July 28, 2023, her mother arrived at Memorial City Mall in Houston to deliver the toucans and accepted $3,000 as payment. Her mother would later admit her daughter had arranged the sale.
Then on Aug. 1, 2023, Valdez then coordinated the sale of a Mexican spider monkey for $8,500. She had her sister deliver it on her behalf.
The animals have since been transferred to zoos within Texas.