{"id":16440,"date":"2012-11-06T08:34:20","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T06:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/11\/thai-man-pleads-guilty-to-south-african-rhino-smuggling\/"},"modified":"2012-11-06T08:34:20","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T06:34:20","slug":"thai-man-pleads-guilty-to-south-african-rhino-smuggling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/thai-man-pleads-guilty-to-south-african-rhino-smuggling\/","title":{"rendered":"Thai man pleads guilty to South African rhino smuggling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* Used Thai prostitutes to stage fake rhino hunts<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* First S.African conviction of senior smuggling ring member<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* Horn sells for prices higher than gold as &#8216;medicine&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>By Jon Herskovitz<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>JOHANNESBURG, Nov 5 (Reuters) &#8211; A Thai man pleaded guilty on<br \/>\nMonday to smuggling rhino horn from South Africa, in a case in<br \/>\nwhich prostitutes posing as big game hunters were used to<br \/>\nconceal an international trafficking ring.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Chumlong Lemtongthai is likely to be jailed for more than 10<br \/>\nyears under a plea deal that investigators said sealed one of<br \/>\nthe most important prosecutions in their fight to protect<br \/>\nrhinos, whose horns are worth more than gold in parts of<br \/>\nSoutheast Asia.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Taking advantage of the fact that it is legal for foreigners<br \/>\nto hunt rhinos in South Africa and ship horns overseas as<br \/>\ntrophies, Chumlong hired Thai prostitutes to stage fake hunts.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The women were given about $800 dollars each to go to game<br \/>\nfarms, take a few shots with small calibre rifles and then pose<br \/>\nnext to rhinos killed by someone else, according to affidavits<br \/>\npresented to the court and seen by Reuters.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The hunters were a front for our decision to export rhino<br \/>\nhorn for trade and not for trophies,&#8221; Chumlong said in a<br \/>\nstatement to a Johannesburg court.<br \/>\n\u00a0 <span class=\"label\"><strong>Continued&#8230;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>* Used Thai prostitutes to stage fake rhino hunts * First S.African conviction of senior smuggling ring member * Horn sells for prices higher than gold as &#8216;medicine&#8217; By Jon Herskovitz JOHANNESBURG, Nov 5 (Reuters) &#8211; A Thai man pleaded guilty on Monday to smuggling rhino horn from South Africa, in a case in which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-16440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}