mobanmarketSPRING HILL, FL —A 48-year-old Spring Hill man has pleaded guilty to two counts of Lacey Act Trafficking after Tampa police officers found several 300-gallon pools filled with turtles intended for trafficking in his home.
Kevin Olbrych faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison. A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.
According to the plea agreement, in 2018, officers from the Tampa Police Department executed a search warrant at Olbrych’s residence. During the search, the officers discovered several 300-gallon pools filled with Florida box turtles loggerhead musk turtles and ornate diamondback terrapins. Police also found other containers for rearing turtles.
Find out what's happening in Tampawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
In all, police found 120 turtles illegally possessed by Olbrych. The animals were not housed properly, and Olbrych did not have the proper license to possess them. Law enforcement confiscated the turtles and turned them over to a wildlife rehabilitator who works with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
After the search, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began investigating Olbrych and found that he had been illegally selling turtles to a co-conspirator in Oregon, who later sold them to buyers in China.
Find out what's happening in Tampawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Even after law enforcement seized the turtles from Olbrych’s home in 2018, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said he continued to traffic turtles through 2021 as part of a massive trafficking ring involving thousands of smuggled turtles.
A long-term undercover investigation by Florida wildlife officials revealed that conspirators have been poaching turtles, most of them native to Florida, and then smuggling them out of the United States where the turtles ended up in international markets in Asia.
A 2009 rule banned the commercial harvest and sale of natural-born turtles in Florida. Since then, said wildlife officials, undercover investigations have since retrieved thousands of stolen turtles worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Between June 2017 and December 2018, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigation discovered that at least 1,500 native turtles — including wood turtles, spotted turtles, and eastern box turtles collected illegally from the wild for the black-market pet trade traveled more than 8,000 miles from the woods and wetlands of Florida to Asia.
The turtles were smuggled overseas in boxes falsely labeled as books, clothes and cosmetics to ensure they would slip past U.S. law enforcement and onto a plane. Each smuggled turtle was stuffed in a tight sock with the opening knotted shut to prevent it from moving. Their limbs were bound to their bodies with tape to keep them from scratching and revealing that there was more than makeup inside.
Special Agent Ryan Bessey is among the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s investigators who has been following the smuggling rings.
He posed as a buyer for an Asian trafficker and, in an 18-month period, received 40 online payments amounting to $78,000 from the buyer.
Bessey said turtles have long been targets of the wildlife trade, whether for food, medicine or increasingly as status symbols, valued by wealthy collectors for their novelty and beauty.
But the internet has fueled unsustainable growth in an unsustainable industry. Consumers have access to animals anywhere in the world and access to people willing to supply them.
Turtles are particularly vulnerable to poaching because of their life histories. It typically takes them a decade or more to reach reproductive age, and most don’t survive that long. Hatchlings are easy targets for natural predators because they are so small.
When someone takes hundreds of turtles, they put entire populations at risk, undermining the ecological balance of the complex natural communities they’re part of, Bessey said.
Turtles cannot afford these losses, he said. Many populations are already stressed by habitat loss, climate change and roads.
“Poaching adds to the problems turtles face, especially when it’s done in an systematic way,” Bessey said. “If someone is paying a network of poachers to scour the woods and pick up every turtle they can find, how long will it take for other turtles to replace them?”
Florida has 23 land and freshwater turtle species. The most sought-after include box turtles, diamondback terrapins, mud and musk turtles, softshell turtles and snapping turtles.
While fleshy softshell and snapping turtles are sold as food in Asian markets, box turtles and other varieties are popular pets that can fetch a Florida poacher up to $300 each. In Asia, the same turtle can sell for as much as $10,000 at glitzy auctions held near Shanghai, according to Chris Lechowicz, wildlife and habitat program director at the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation.
“It’s a status symbol to have these in your home,” said Lechowicz. “Turtles are synonymous with long life. They are a big part of the traditions there (Asia).”
“There are people who have whole rooms full of turtles. They collect them like postage stamps,” said George Heinrich, executive director of the Florida Turtle Conservation Trust.
Between 2016 and 2019, about 6.5 million live turtles were exported from the U.S., including 521,700 from Florida.
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.