On October 14, 2009, the USDOJ announced that Gunther Wenzek, a German national, pleaded guilty in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, to one count of smuggling coral into the United States. Sentencing is scheduled for January 5, 2010.
Wenzek was originally arrested in February 2009 when he entered the United States at Dulles airport, en route to a pet exposition in Orlando, FL. Wenzek owns a company named CoraPet, based in Germany that sells various coral products to retailers in the United States. Customs agents seized two full containers of coral (40 tons of coral) shipped by Wenzek to a customer in Portland. The corals seized were identified as corals from the scientific order Scleractinia, genera Porites, Acropora, and Pocillopora, common to Philippine reefs. Due to the threat of extinction, stony corals are protected by international law. Philippine law specifically forbids exports of all coral. Additionally, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (