NEW YORK—Owners of two retail stores pleaded guilty to illegally selling ivory from endangered elephant species, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced Thursday after seizing almost one ton of illegal ivory trinkets and jewelry from the stores.
“Poachers should not have a market in Manhattan,” said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., in a statement. “It is unacceptable that tusks from elephants wind up being sold as mass-produced jewelry and unremarkable decorative items in this city.”
The two store owners violated the state Environmental Conservation Law, which prohibits selling “any article made of endangered or threatened wildlife species unless the seller has been granted a license or permit from the [Department of Environmental Conservation].” This would typically require proof that the sellers obtained the ivory before a species is declared endangered or threatened, or that the ivory is antique.
The sellers definitely didn’t have such licenses, the DA’s office said, because the Asian elephant and the African elephant were listed as threatened in 1976 and 1978. “All elephants today fall into one of these two species listed on federal endangered and threatened species list.”
Mukesh Gupta, 67, pleaded guilty to one count of illegal commercialization of wildlife, a class E felony under the Environmental Conservation Law. Gupta’s company Raja Jewels, on 45th Street, pleaded guilty to two counts of illegal commercialization of wildlife. Johnson Jung-Chien Lu, 56, and his company New York Jewelry Mart on West 46th Street, each pleaded guilty to one count of illegal commercialization of wildlife.
The DA’s office, along with the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, seized “beads, intricately carved tusks, bracelets, earrings, animal carvings,” with a retail value of more than $2 million, from the two stores.
Gupta and Lu must forfeit all of the ivory goods and pay $45,000 and $10,000, which will go toward the Wildlife Conservation Society’s battle against the illegal ivory trade and to help in the protection of elephants.
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