A 26-year-old woman from Canada has been busted for allegedly selling two polar bear skulls to an undercover agent and attempting to cross over into Quebec with “quite a few undeclared wildlife objects” together with crocodile ft and a three-toed sloth, federal officers stated.
Vanessa Rondeau, the proprietor of The Outdated Cavern Boutique in Montreal, which sells “quite a lot of distinctive curiosity and oddity objects, many composed in complete or partially from wildlife,” was arrested Wednesday in Highgate Springs, Vermont, court docket information present.
On the time, Rondeau was attempting to cross over into Canada with a slew of undeclared oddities — together with raccoon ft, African antelope horns and shark jaws — and was refused entry when she didn’t have proof of a unfavourable COVID-19 take a look at, in accordance to her felony criticism.
Rondeau was initially stopped by US Customs and Border Safety for not declaring the objects however federal brokers had been already on her tail.
As a part of an undercover operation that began in 2019, Particular Agent Ryan Bessey from the US Fish and Wildlife Service contacted the eccentricities fanatic in January 2020 asking to purchase a polar bear cranium she was promoting on Fb, court docket information present.
Rondeau agreed to promote the agent the cranium for $780 after which she bought him one other one for about $600 this January in violation of the Endangered Species Act, paperwork allege.
She’d already bought him a mounted crow, marketed on Fb with witchcraft hashtags, and investigators later intercepted packages she’d allegedly despatched to the US containing skulls from a weasel, chook and bat and the pores and skin of a Hartmann’s mountain zebra, information allege.
Investigators from the USFWS allege Rondeau is a wildlife smuggler who entered the US 18 occasions between November 2018 and September 2019 largely on the Champlain, New York port of entry. Rondeau sometimes entered between midnight and a pair of a.m. — which is a typical time for wildlife smugglers to cross borders — and has acquired greater than $100,000 in earnings, the information allege.
Prior to Rondeau’s arrest, she had traveled to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and was stuffed to the gills with undeclared wildlife objects when she was busted in Vermont.
In whole, Rondeau allegedly had 18 crocodile skulls, seven crocodilian ft, one three-toed sloth, 12 horseshoe crabs, 30 sea stars, 23 raccoon ft, eight African antelope horns, 4 puffer fish, six shark jaws and a single human cranium “with mounted butterflies.”
An e-mail to Rondeau’s public defender went unreturned Sunday night time.
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