A man trafficked turtles on Facebook. It’s a ‘huge problem,’ experts say.

Virginia man pleads guilty to trafficking turtles on Facebook - The Washington Post

On his “best day,” Stanlee Fazi managed to pluck 22 turtles from their habitats in Virginia forests. But when it rained, Fazi told a potential buyer in 2017, he could catch eight or 10 right off the road, court documents state.

Fazi’s defense attorney described his client as a well-meaning turtle lover who never meant any harm.

“Mr. Fazi loves turtles and publicly sold a small number of turtles that he found over several years to fellow aficionados here in the United States,” his attorney, Edward Ungvarsky, said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Though Ungvarsky said Fazi “never intended for any of them to be anything other than loved by other turtle fans,” the case has become the latest example of what scientists and law enforcement officials have deemed a crisis devastating the global turtle population. The rising demand for the reptiles as pets — or even as food and medicine — has made them a hot commodity for international trafficking networks and smaller sellers, who often operate through social media.

That, combined with habitat destruction and other human activities, has led half of the world’s nearly 360 turtle species to be threatened with extinction. In the United States, the country with the second-highest concentration of turtle species in the world, the trafficking problem is particularly serious, said Scott Buchanan, a herpetologist with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.

“With illegal wildlife trade, people are accustomed to thinking, ‘Oh, that’s tigers and elephants and rhinos or other exotic species,’” Buchanan said. “But there really is a widespread, and unfortunately thriving, illegal trade of turtles, especially in the eastern United States.”

In Virginia, prosecutors said Fazi sold turtles to at least 27 customers and received some $12,700 in return. The highest demand was for “screamers,” or turtles with shells featuring bright yellow and orange splotches. According to court documents, Fazi would often advertise his turtle stock on Facebook groups and Facebook Marketplace — attaching photos of the turtles he described as “the best easterns you have ever seen.”

Most of them, court documents state, were eastern box turtles — a species named for the turtles’ unique ability to completely close up in their shells, like a box, when frightened. But poaching and the destruction of their habitat has left their population classified as vulnerable. Virginia passed a law in 2021 banning eastern box turtles from being kept as pets.

Some members in the social media groups warned Fazi that what he was doing was illegal, court records show. In one instance, he replied: “I know all about the laws and would be stupid to not research first,” according to prosecutors.

Facebook policy prohibits wildlife trafficking. The sale of non-endangered animals is allowed only through “legitimate brick-and-mortar entities,” it states.

“We don’t allow the sale or purchase of animals on Marketplace — and we prohibit the sale of illegal or endangered animals anywhere on our technologies,” said a spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company.

Fazi’s turtles were shipped from Virginia in cardboard boxes to at least eight states, including California, Wisconsin and Texas, court records state. In one case, Fazi “bound the turtles in socks and shipped them to [a buyer] in Florida from Fredericksburg,” prosecutors said.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials took notice of his public sales while investigating reptile trafficking between the United States and China — a probe dubbed “Operation Middleman,” according to court records.

Fazi’s first court hearing was April 12. After entering a guilty plea, he is due to be sentenced on July 26 and faces up to five years in prison.

Illegal trading has a particularly calamitous effect on turtle populations, said Dave Collins, a program leader for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ SAFE American Turtles Program. Though turtles can live up to 100 years, only a small fraction make it into adulthood. The reptiles are easy prey and face other challenges like habitat destruction and road accidents — making it harder for them to reach their reproductive maturity at around 10 to 15 years.

“Turtles have to survive all those natural threats, only to then be poached,” said Collins, who is also a director at the conservation nonprofit Turtle Survival Alliance. “… This is a group of animals that simply cannot survive that level of take, and that’s why illegal trade is so important to combat.”

The uptick in turtle trafficking has led scientists, law enforcement officials and nonprofits to join forces. One of those groups, the Collaborative to Combat the Illegal Trade in Turtles, has documented over 30 major trafficking cases in the United States since 2018.

Still, the exact scale of the turtle crisis is hard to pin down, Buchanan said. It spans continents and is often enmeshed with other forms of illegal trafficking.

Officials operate under the assumption that the cases they’ve cracked represent a small fraction of the total number, he added.

“We are certain that the scale is problematic and unsustainable,” Buchanan said. “And cases like the one in Virginia play out across the country every year and highlight why this is such a huge problem we need to solve.”