New Yorker Imprisoned for Smuggling $150k in Lion and Tiger Parts
Arogkron Malasukum will spend nine months in jail for trafficking endangered cat skulls, claws, and teeth to a jeweler in Thailand.
Government agents monitoring black markets for wildlife products received intelligence in April 2016 that a man named Arogkron Malasukum, a U.S. citizen from Thailand, was on the hunt for a tiger skull. Malasukum, 42, who goes by Paul, said he’d pay $700 for the item.
Two weeks later Malasukum rapped on the door of a hotel room in the Dallas suburb of Lewisville, where his buyer and an associate—actually two undercover cops with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—were waiting with the merchandise. Malasukum paid cash. Then he allowed one of them to come along while he packed and shipped the bleached skull to his address in Queens, New York.
Malasukum said he was looking for some straw buyers to purchase tiger
