ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A Virginia man who pleaded guilty in federal court to trafficking turtles in violation of a federal law was sentenced July 26 to six months’ incarceration.
Stanlee Fazi, 41, pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria earlier this year to disregarding the Lacey Act.
Besides imprisonment, Fazi is banned from owning, possessing, buying or selling live animals “unless approved by the court or the Probation Office.” In addition, a monitoring program will be installed on any computer he owns, and he will be subject to random, unannounced searches of those computers by law enforcement officers.
Fazi admitted that between July 31, 2017, and June 29, 2020, he illegally collected eastern box turtles from the wild and sold them on at least 27 occasions to buyers in California, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin.
He received approximately $12,700 using Facebook Marketplace for these sales, records indicate. Many of his purchasers, in turn, smuggled the turtles from the U.S. to Hong Kong and China for the illegal pet trade. Fazi acknowledged binding the turtles in socks and shipping them by FedEx from Fredericksburg.
The federal Lacey Act, established in 1900, is the nation’s oldest wildlife trafficking statute and prohibits transporting or selling wildlife in interstate commerce if the wildlife were illegally taken or possessed under state laws. The Commonwealth of Virginia also prohibits taking turtles from the wild or selling them.
The eastern box turtle is a subspecies of the common box turtle. The eastern box turtle is native to forested regions of the eastern United States, including Virginia, with some isolated populations in the Midwest. The turtles typically reach a length of up to 6 inches and can live more than 100 years. The turtles have a domed carapace, which can display radiated lines or spots. Turtles with colorful markings are particularly prized in the domestic and foreign pet trade market.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Offices of Law Enforcement in Baltimore and Vero Beach, Florida, conducted the investigation. The operation focused on the trafficking of reptiles from the U.S. to China.