![]() Lokua and Mujangi admitted that they traveled to Seattle on Nov. He stated that payment would have to be routed through a bank account in China before they could access the cash in Kinshasa. Lokua discussed sending two tons of ivory and one ton of pangolin scales concealed in a shipping container. Lokua and Mujangi acknowledged that in June 2021, they sent nearly five pounds of rhinoceros horn to Seattle using a similar scheme. They arranged for the ivory to be cut into smaller pieces and painted black the packages were then falsely labeled as containing wood. They sent three packages containing approximately 49 pounds of ivory from Kinshasa. Between August and September 2020, Lokua and Mujangi made several small sales to build trust with the buyers. They worked with a middleman to negotiate the sales and coordinate imports to Seattle. In their prior guilty pleas, both defendants admitted that, beginning in November 2019, they agreed to smuggle the wildlife products at issue to the United States. “HSI is proud of our international public and private sector partnerships who enabled the success of this investigation and will continue to leverage those partnerships to target and dismantle future trafficking organizations who seek profit over the risk of extinction.” “Wildlife trafficking is decimating many species worldwide and has broader impacts to a country’s economic development and security,” said Special Agent in Charge Robert Hammer, who oversees Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) operations in the Pacific Northwest. ![]() “I commend our Homeland Security Investigations and DRC partners in stopping this trafficking ring before tons of protected wildlife products entered the illegal market.” “Today’s sentence demonstrates that wildlife trafficking leads to prison, and that we are committed to prosecuting this crime,” said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. Mujangi helped package the wildlife products and handled the financial details to process the payment through a Chinese bank and then back to DRC. ![]() The court determined that Lokua was the organizer of a trafficking operation involving more than five other co-conspirators whose goal was to ship a cargo container full of elephant ivory, white rhinoceros horn, and pangolin scales to Seattle. Both men had pleaded guilty to conspiracy and Lacey Act charges on July 13. Lokua was sentenced to 20 months in prison and Mujangi was sentenced to 14 months in prison. A federal judge sentenced Herdade Lokua, 34, and Jospin Mujangi, 32, of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), to prison for their roles in trafficking wildlife products from DRC to Seattle.
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