Did ‘The Lizard King’ use his Hollywood business to smuggle Florida turtles overseas?
A Davie man who did federal prison time for buying smuggled wildlife now has been accused of snatching protected Florida turtles from the wild and smuggling them overseas to China, Japan and other nations.
Michael Van Nostrand, president of Hollywood’s Strictly Reptiles., was charged last week with conspiracy to traffic illegal wildlife in interstate and foreign commerce.
Back in 1997, Van Nostrand was sentenced to eight months with a $7,500 fine for conspiracy to import species of wildlife without a valid permit and two counts of prohibited acts with an endangered species.
Brian Christy’s 2008 book “The Lizard King” focused on the pursuit of Van Nostrand by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent Chip Bepler.
Federal prosecutors now allege Van Nostrand and his cohorts yanked certain species of Florida turtles from their natural habitats and sold them to buyers in Louisiana, California, China and Japan as “captive-bred” turtles to cover the illegal activity.
The turtles most often involved, prosecutors say, were the three-stripe mud turtles (Kinosternon baurii) and musk turtles (Sternotherus odoratus).
Among the 30 overt acts alleged from April 15, 2017, through Feb. 12, 2019, were:
▪ Van Nostrand text-messaging a cooperating source requesting at least 30 three-stripe mud turtles:
▪ Van Nostrand buying 59 three-stripe mud turtles, 10 common mud turtles and two soft-shell turtles, all wild-caught, with a $970 check drawn on Strictly Reptiles’ account;
▪ A co-conspirator taking 292 wild-caught three-stripe mud turtles to Miami International Airport for shipping to Shanghai, China, with a Customs declaration saying they came from captivity.
Van Nostrand’s attorneys didn’t return an email from the Miami Herald on Wednesday afternoon.
This story was originally published October 6, 2021 at 3:00 PM.
