A 26-year-old woman from Canada has been busted for allegedly selling two polar bear skulls to an undercover agent and trying to cross over into Quebec with “numerous undeclared wildlife items” including crocodile feet and a three-toed sloth, federal officials said.
Vanessa Rondeau, the owner of The Old Cavern Boutique in Montreal, which sells “a variety of unique curiosity and oddity items, many composed in whole or in part from wildlife,” was arrested Wednesday in Highgate Springs, Vermont, court records show.
At the time, Rondeau was trying to cross over into Canada with a slew of undeclared oddities — including raccoon feet, African antelope horns and shark jaws — and was refused entry when she didn’t have proof of a negative COVID-19 test, according to her criminal complaint.
Rondeau was initially stopped by US Customs and Border Protection for not declaring the items but federal agents were already on her tail.
As part of an undercover operation that started in 2019, Special Agent Ryan Bessey from the US Fish and Wildlife Service contacted the oddities enthusiast in January 2020 asking to buy a polar bear skull she was advertising on Facebook, court records show.
Rondeau agreed to sell the agent the skull for $780 and then she sold him another one for about $600 this January in violation of the Endangered Species Act, documents allege.
She’d already sold him a mounted crow, advertised on Facebook with witchcraft hashtags, and investigators later intercepted packages she’d allegedly sent to the US containing skulls from a weasel, bird and bat and the skin of a Hartmann’s mountain zebra, records allege.
Investigators from the USFWS allege Rondeau is a wildlife smuggler who entered the US 18 times between November 2018 and September 2019 mostly at the Champlain, New York port of entry. Rondeau typically entered between midnight and 2 a.m. — which is a common time for wildlife smugglers to cross borders — and has received more than $100,000 in earnings, the records allege.
Prior to Rondeau’s arrest, she had traveled to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and was stuffed to the gills with undeclared wildlife items when she was busted in Vermont.
In total, Rondeau allegedly had 18 crocodile skulls, seven crocodilian feet, one three-toed sloth, 12 horseshoe crabs, 30 sea stars, 23 raccoon feet, eight African antelope horns, four puffer fish, six shark jaws and a single human skull “with mounted butterflies.”
An email to Rondeau’s public defender went unreturned Sunday night.
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May 31, 2021 at 10:01AM
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Canadian woman busted for selling polar bear skulls to undercover agent - New York Post
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