Prosecutors: Alabama shop sold coat of endangered jaguar fur

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Jeff Martin, Associated Press

Updated 1:59 pm, Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Jaguar fur on a 47-year-old coat has prompted a federal case in which prosecutors accuse an Alabama clothing consignment shop of violating the Endangered Species Act.

The shop, which does business as Hertha's Second Edition, ran afoul of the federal act by selling a fur coat to someone in Biloxi, Mississippi, prosecutors said in a criminal complaint filed this week in the Southern District of Alabama. The coat was made partly from the hide of a jaguar, authorities said.

A widower had brought the coat into the consignment shop after his wife had died, said lawyer T. Jefferson Deen III, who represents the business.

Because the coat is so old, it was legal to have as long as it was kept in Alabama, Deen said.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Prosecutors-Alabama-shop-sold-coat-of-endangered-11726831.php

---

[Coventina]

1. Ugh. One of the ugliest recent fashion trends

is the comeback of fur.

Somehow it's socially acceptable again!

People need to get out their red paint buckets again.....

[Warpy]

2. Remember the 80s? All the urban yuppies back east were going into debt

to buy fur coats, a signal that one had made it. Well, as a nurse I barely qualified as a yuppie, so I hotfooted down to Chinatown where all the good fabric stores were then, found some almost believable fake fur, and bought a pattern, made my own coat. It's convincing enough to get me dirty looks at the health food store on the 2-3 days a year I can wear it in NM. When someone asks what breed of dead animal it is, I answer "petrochemical." Some people even get it.

I did eventually inherit my mother's 2 mink coats. I dislike them intensely, they're very heavy to wear and not nearly as warm as my wonderful homemade fake fur coat. I've been waiting for the next round for fur lust so I can sell them for more than 5 bucks.

[Stonepounder]

3. While I think that "fur" coats are apalling,

it seems to me that the prosecutors ought to have better things to do. A second hand clothing sells a nearly 50-year-old coat to an adjoining city that happens to be in a different state? Oh, and if you read the article, the Gov't seemingly set her up. A Gov't agent offered MORE than the asking price and asked to have it shipped.

Wonder who the owner pissed-off?

[YOHABLO]

4. Oh shit like we don't kill animals to make shoes, purses, belts? It's 47 years old at that.

[Hieronymus]

5. Cows aren't endangered.

[truthisfreedom]

6. Complicated bunch of bs if you ask me.

47 year old coat that legally has to stay in Alabama? Isn't the buyer guilty of entrapment by enticing the seller to break federal law?

"But the buyer ended up being a government agent, who had put in an offer for the coat that was higher than others were asking and enticed the store to sell it across the state line — a violation of federal law, the defense lawyer said."