Infiltrating the Illegal Wildlife Trade: A Trafficker’s Downfall | Nat Geo Live

Anson Wong is a wildlife trafficker. He's also a guy who was trafficking at the time all the things we care about when we think about precious wildlife. He was offering snow leopard pelts, rhino horn, and he was moving live elephants. He had a tiger farm in Vietnam where they raised tigers, killed them, mounted them as taxidermy specimens, and sold them as trophies for people to put in their living rooms. He had this Spix's Macaw. It's a bird that's supposed to be extinct in the wild. Anson was offering three for $100,000 apiece.

The US Fish and Wildlife service considered him in the 90s the biggest international wildlife trafficker in the world. They launched an investigation called "Operation Chameleon". And it was successful. When he got out of jail, he went immediately back to the reptile business. I also know from talking to reptile traders he was never out of business. While he was in jail, his wife was trading for him. So, we came up with another operation we called it "Operation Big Ego".

So, I learned his techniques and then I went to Indonesia where his major customers and competitors are. I lived on a reptile breeding farm and met as many of his competitors and... clients, as possible. Then I flew to Malaysia. And I didn't know what Anson looked like. I said—I walked into the shop, 22-B, Jones Road and I—there are two Chinese guys standing in the doorway. I said, they said... "Can we help you?" I said, "Yeah, I'm looking for Anson Wong." And then the same guy said, "I'm Anson Wong."

I said, "Oh, I'm Bryan Christy." He said, "I've heard of you. I hear you're writing about Strictly Reptiles. What you should really be doing is writing about me. I'm much bigger." And that... is when Operation Big Ego really took off. (audience laughter) And he, and he said not only that but "look" and he slid a stack of blueprints across the desk to me. I said, "What's this?" He said, "A tiger farm. I'm building a tiger park here on Penang Island. And the government is funding me."

So, this is the world's leading wildlife trafficker arrested in the United States. He returns, his own government funds him to build a tiger park. This is a guy who is trafficking in tigers. I said, "I have a story." The story was called "The Kingpin". This story ran in Malaysia. Within weeks law enforcement officials raided Anson's facilities. They stripped him off his business license and his license to move endangered species. Members of parliament took that literal magazine and held it on the floor of parliament and demanded change.

Malaysian parliament passed the first new reform legislation for wildlife in 40 years. That summer, Anson was arrested. And he was tried and convicted, sentenced to six months in prison. The public outcry over a six month prison was so great that the government effectively appealed its own victory, retried him and he was sentenced to five years in prison. A massive penalty... in any country in the world. The prosecutor and the judge held up this story and said, "This is what we're doing."