An Irishman has been sentenced to one year in federal prison after pleading guilty in the US state of Texas to illegal trafficking in rhinoceros horns.
Patrick Sheridan was arrested in January 2015 in Holyhead, Wales, on an indictment returned in May 2014 by a federal grand jury in Waco.
It charged that he and a co-defendant conspired to traffic in the horns of the critically endangered black rhinoceros by using a “straw buyer’’ to buy two horns from a Texas taxidermist.
They then old these horns and two others also illegally purchased in Texas to a buyer in New York.
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Co-defendant Michael Slattery Jr pleaded guilty in Brooklyn, New York, to his role in the scheme and was sentenced to 14 months in prison in January 2014.
AP