Taxidermist sold rhino horns ‘to Chinese maf ia’
Illicit trade in rare species ends in jail
A TAXIDERMIST has had the stuffing knocked out of him – after being jailed for trading the skulls, teeth and horns of endangered species on the black market.
Aaron Halstead, 29, made £63,000 in one sale alone – selling four black rhino horns to a Chinese businessman via a middle man he met in France.
The professional taxidermist had created false invoices to get through customs, eventually making two trips to exchange the horns for cash in a Paris hotel room.
As he returned to the UK he even texted a contact, telling him: ‘I must be mad. I’m in France meeting the Chinese mafia!’
Preston Crown Court heard that between September 2017 and January 2018, Halstead spoke to several buyers over Instagram and WhatsApp to discuss the buying and selling of tiger skulls and rhino horns. He paid £8,000 for ten tiger skulls, later boasting to a buyer that he did not need to be ‘afraid of customs’, adding: ‘It will be fine... I’ve never had anything stopped.’
The messages also revealed that, although he bought three black rhino heads legitimately at auction, he was preparing to remove the horns and sell them for vast amounts on the black market.
He planned to break up and sell another horn, which was damaged, for up to £800 per 3.5oz piece. Mark Stuart, defending, said: ‘If he had bought the rhinoceros and then sold them as he had bought them it would not have been illegal. However, he removed the horns, weighed them and sold them at home and abroad. This was a ridiculously stupid and greedy decision.’
The demand for such items has created a multi-billion pound illegal trading industry. Rhino horn is used in traditional Chinese medicine, and is also increasingly seen as a status symbol.
Halstead, who operated from a room at his parents’ home in Burnley, has posed with many stuffed animals in the past including giraffes. He has also previously posted a picture of a collection of human skulls on his website.
He was arrested in 2018 following a tip-off from someone who had been offered the illegal rhino horns for sale over Instagram.
He pleaded guilty to offences including selling and transporting black rhino horns, acquiring tiger skulls for a commercial purpose, offering a sperm whale tooth and black rhino skull for sale and keeping elephant tusks for sale. Jailing him for 56 weeks, Judge Robert Altham said: ‘This is no hapless amateur who has offended by stumbling into an area of legislation he was not aware of. This was an organised and international trade... committed at high prices. It was brazen, persistent and well organised criminality.’
Halstead had been jailed five years ago for buying sperm whale teeth, the skulls of a cheetah and a dolphin and offering to sell a snowy owl without a permit.