A Malaysian man who sold a dozen black rhino and white rhino horns to a confidential source was sentenced to a year and a half in a U.S. prison Tuesday, federal prosecutors in New York said. Teo Boon Ching, known as the “Godfather,” had pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy to commit wildlife trafficking, the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan said in a statement.

“As long as you have cash, I can give you the goods in 1-2 days,” Ching, 58, told the confidential source during a meeting in Malaysia in 2019, according to prosecutors.

The Malaysia meetings lasted for two days, and during that time, Ching described himself as a “middleman” who buys rhino horns poached by co-conspirators in Africa and ships them to customers around the world, according to prosecutors. Ching also sent the source photos of rhino horns that were for sale.

Later that year, authorities directed the source to buy 12 rhino horns from Ching, which were delivered to the source in a suitcase. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lab confirmed two of the horns were from a black rhino, which the World Wildlife Fund considers to be critically endangered, and the other 10 horns were from white rhinos, which are not considered to be endangered but are instead “near threatened,” according to the group.

Ching was arrested in Thailand in 2022 and eventually extradited to the U.S. According to prosecutors, he conspired to traffic approximately 480 pounds of poached rhino horns worth about $2.1 million.

45 points
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Disappointingly short prison sentence.

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16 points

I suspect the short prison sentence is because he flipped on the people above him.

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8 points

Very disappointing. Maybe horn for a horn?

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21 points

Lucky guy can be back out in just 18 months and immediately begin causing irreparable harm to life on the planet again.

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15 points

So two unique species that took billions of years to evolve are judged to be less valuable than two years of some pond scums life.

Return to monke when?

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14 points

A death sentence for the animals and species involved.

Why not a life sentence for all the people involved?

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-4 points
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13 points

More years please. Many, many more years

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2 points

One year per rhino

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2 points

I’m fine with more years than that, but at least a year. I mean he had a dozen horns and he gets a year and a half? That’s insane.

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