8 Charged in Scheme to Smuggle Endangered Monkeys From Asia, U.S. Says

The Cambodian Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries also did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Wednesday.

From December 2017 to September 2022, Masphal Kry helped bring captured wild macaques to Vanny Resources Holdings, a Hong Kong-based company that breeds monkeys for research, according to an indictment unsealed on Wednesday. Sometimes, the indictment states, he would personally delivery the primates himself to the facilities, which were operated by the co-conspirators.

Two top executives at Vanny Resources Holdings — James Man Sang Lau, the founder and owner, and Dickson Lau, the general manager — secretly worked with dealers on the black market to acquire the wild-caught macaques and “launder them through the Cambodian entities for export to the U.S.,” prosecutors said in a news release.

Vanny Resources Holdings could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday.

It’s unclear how many illegally smuggled monkeys ended up in the U.S., but prosecutors said that they had tallied about 3,000 “unofficial” monkeys that were illegally allowed to be exported.

On May 11, 2019, a shipment of 360 long-tailed macaques in Alice, Texas, contained about 74 monkeys that had been caught in the wild, according to the indictment. On June 27, 2019, 194 more of those monkeys arrived in Alice, Texas. And on Nov. 11, 2020, 323 macaques were delivered to Miami.

The shipments that arrive in the U.S. hold enormous value: One, of 396 long-tailed macaques on Nov. 11, 2020, was worth more than $1 million, the indictment states.

That valuation is echoed in the huge sums of money that black-market suppliers were paid for their dealings, prosecutors said. One, who is referred to as “Black Market Supplier D” in the indictment, received $10,380 for his delivery of 60 wild-caught macaques to a Vanny Resources Holdings facility; another got $8,360 for about 38 more.