THE AGE (Melbourne, Australia) 16 May 08 Reptile expert fined over snake scam (Steve Butcher)

Photo at URL below: One of the snakes sent to a Belgrave South post box from South Africa. (Inset) An x-ray of one of the packaged pythons. (Australian Customs Service)

A leading Victorian reptile expert fined $3000 for illegally importing four pythons planned to use the snakes in his collection in a breeding scam for profit.

Meyndert Jacobus Bornman, 32, a former president of the Victorian Herpetological Society, was caught in an Australian Customs sting after four green tree pythons were imported from South Africa.

Melbourne Magistrates Court heard yesterday the snakes were labelled as promotional rugby material, a Springbok jumper or Lonely Planet guides to South Africa.

The pythons, a species listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), were packed in pillow cases surrounded by shredded paper.

Jan McAlpine, prosecuting, told the court Bornman sent $6500 for the snakes' purchase to his mother in South Africa who was instructed by him how to arrange their importation.

Ms McAlpine said quarantine officers at a Sydney international postal facility found a first snake on March 19 this year labelled to an address in Belgrave South.

Ms McAlpine said two more pythons were found in similar parcels on March 30 before investigators later identified Bornman when he checked a post box at the address.

On April 2, after Bornman collected a postal notification card put in the box by investigators - who had also placed a box with matching delivery details at the local post office - he was arrested.

On that same day a fourth python was found in Sydney.

Bornman admitted he found the pythons on a South African web site and planned them as replacements for four licenced pythons that had died.

Ms McAlpine said Bornman revealed he intended to breed them for profit and "would keep the imported snakes illegally until he had money to buy babies and then claim the imported ones were the babies".

Defence lawyer David Starvaggi said Bornman, unemployed, who has degrees in botany and zoology, was apologetic and remorseful and had learned a valuable lesson.

Magistrate John Bentley also convicted Bornman, of Ferntree Gully, who pleaded guilty to four charges of importing a CITES specimen, and ordered him to pay $300 costs.
Reptile expert fined over snake scam

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• AUS Press:Reptile expert fined over scam - W von Papineäu, Fri May 16 08:14:18 2008