Florida Wildlife Rehabilitator Charged After Selling Endangered Animals Online

On April 14, 2025, Tariq Anwar Jolibois-Beauchamp — a state-permitted wildlife rehabilitator operating Heart of Florida Wildlife Rehab on a 12-acre property near Lake Wales, Florida, and a recognized public face of central Florida conservation with approximately 187,000 Instagram followers — was charged in the Middle District of Florida with violations of the Endangered Species Act (16 U.S.C. § 1538), Lacey Act wildlife trafficking (16 U.S.C. § 3372), Migratory Bird Treaty Act violations, conspiracy, wire fraud, and federal tax evasion after a multi-agency investigation led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement revealed he had conducted approximately 78 illegal commercial transactions selling protected and endangered wildlife — including eastern indigo snakes, gopher tortoises, American kestrels, and red-shouldered hawks — to private collectors across eleven states and three countries, generating an estimated $284,000 in illicit revenue between September 2021 and December 2024. The case, part of Operation Spotted Tortoise, was broken open when an undercover USFWS special agent posing as a private collector negotiated a $14,000 Bitcoin purchase of two federally threatened eastern indigo snakes, accepting delivery from Jolibois-Beauchamp at a Tampa-area Cracker Barrel parking lot in October 2024. Federal search warrants executed on December 14, 2024, recovered 47 undocumented protected specimens, financial records, encrypted buyer correspondence, and a handwritten ledger of true animal dispositions that directly contradicted four years of monthly compliance reports Jolibois-Beauchamp had filed with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission — the same agency that had issued his permit and commended him for his conservation work in 2019. The FWC initiated permit-revocation proceedings on December 19, 2024. Jolibois-Beauchamp faces a federal sentencing guidelines range of 41 to 63 months, substantial restitution, and forfeiture of the rehabilitation facility itself. #wildlifetrafficking #endangeredspecies #arrested #conservation #floridawildlife #bodycam #LaceyAct #investigation #USFWS #wildlife #corruption #justice ---- Disclaimer: This video is a dramatization based on real events. Some visual content was created with artificial intelligence assistance. Some details have been fictionalized and all names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.