Home / CITES media / Notorious Rathkeale Rover and rhino smuggler John Slattery deported back to Ireland after three-month prison stint in US

Notorious Rathkeale Rover and rhino smuggler John Slattery deported back to Ireland after three-month prison stint in US


NOTORIOUS Rathkeale Rover and rhino horn smuggler John Slattery clutches his belongings as he arrives back in Ireland after a US jail stint.

Rhino horn smuggler John Slattery arrived back into Ireland yesterday

Rhino horn smuggler John Slattery arrives back into Ireland

He was ­identified as a member of the Rathkeale Rovers, a global rhino horn theft and smuggling mob, by investigators working on Operation Oakleaf.

Slattery was deported after three months at the ­Federal Medical Centre in Fort Worth, Texas, which was hit by a coronavirus outbreak earlier this year.

He was held on remand at the prison until he received a one-year sentence at a federal court in Waco, also Texas, on July 22, after he was convicted of “illegally ­trafficking endangered black rhino horns” worth $18,000.

Slattery was convicted under Operation Crash of buying the horns from a taxidermy shop in Austin, Texas, before they were sold in New York for $50,000.

But the rhino smuggler was sent back to Ireland this week because the US authorities accepted he had spent nine months on remand at Dublin’s Cloverhill Prison awaiting his extradition. Due to Covid-19, he was released from Cloverhill Prison for two weeks and returned to Rathkeale, in Limerick, as a High Court judge considered the request.

Once the US ask was accepted, he was arrested by armed gardai and five US investigators at his home in Rathkeale at 2am in the morning of May 23. The US government forked out to fly to Ireland to extradite Slattery because of the reduction in flights due to the Coronavirus emergency.

Slattery is the last remaining rhino trafficking suspect wanted by US authorities. His brother Michael, 29, served a 14-month sentence for his role in the scam.

Also caged for the same offence was Patrick ‘Crying Dan’ Sheridan. He was jailed in Waco for a year in 2016 after violating local wildlife trafficking laws by buying four black rhino horns before selling them in New York. Court documents show Sheridan contacted a taxidermy business in Austin, Texas on September 21, 2010 to “inquire about purchasing” a black rhinoceros shoulder mount.

Source: The Sun ie

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