Agent Goes Ape to Win Conviction : Wildlife: A Mexican zoo official is found guilty of breaking U.S. endangered species laws. He tried to buy a ‘gorilla’ that was a lawman in disguise.

In a case that grew out of a celebrated sting operation in which a federal agent donned a gorilla suit and thumped his chest in a bizarre bit of black market theater, a high-ranking Mexican zoo official was found guilty Tuesday of violating U.S. endangered species laws.

Victor Bernal, 57, faces as many as 17 years in prison and almost $1 million in fines for trying to pay $92,500 for a “gorilla” that turned out to be a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent in furry disguise.

Bernal, director of zoos and parks for the central Mexican state of Mexico, was found guilty in U.S. District Court here of three felony and two misdemeanor counts having to do with the attempted illegal export of a great ape.

Also convicted on the same five counts was Mexican animal importer Eduardo Berges, 32.

Judge Federico A. Moreno set sentencing for July 18 and ordered both men jailed until a Friday bond hearing.

Bernal’s defense was entrapment. He said that he was set up by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents seeking retribution for the slaying of Enrique (Kiki) Camarena, 37, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was abducted, tortured and killed by drug traffickers in Guadalajara, Mexico, in February, 1985.

Alleging that agents referred to the gorilla sting as “Operation Kiki,” defense attorney Donald I. Bierman told the jury: “They wanted to get a man in Mexico to show that Kiki Camarena was not to be forgotten.”

But the 12-member jury didn’t buy that argument.

According to prosecutors, Bernal wanted to buy a young gorilla to replace one that had died at the Toluca, Mexico, zoo, one of two national zoos and 16 parks under his jurisdiction. Bernal called Berges, and he made the contact in Miami, prosecutors said.

For several days in January, 1993, undercover agent Jorge Picone, posing as a shady animal dealer, chauffeured Bernal, Berges and Berges’ partner, Jose Luis Alcerreca, 45, around Miami’s zoos and wildlife parks to look at various primates.

The sting took place on Jan. 25, 1993, when Bernal and the others were escorted onto a DC-3 cargo plane parked in a remote corner of a small Miami airport to see the gorilla, crated for shipment. As they stood in front of the crate, which had been “seeded” with real gorilla feces from Miami’s Metrozoo for olfactory effect, the ape suddenly opened the box and climbed out.

Bernal screamed. He tried to jump out of the plane onto the runway six feet below the door. “We kept telling him, ‘We’re police! We’re police!’ But even after the agent took the hood off, he couldn’t believe a gorilla wasn’t coming after him,” reported Monty Halcomb, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent posing as the plane’s pilot.

In the three weeks of trial, jurors listened to hours of testimony about the network of laws designed to protect endangered primates, and also watched an undercover videotape of the sting. As Bernal is being led off the plane under arrest on the tape, the ersatz gorilla, an agent with long blond hair, is seen following him, his mask off and smoking a cigarette.

Bierman described Bernal, a lawyer, as a lifelong conservationist who recently had arranged for a breeding loan of an elephant from the Los Angeles Zoo, and was unaware that the fake gorilla being offered for sale would not have valid export papers.

“He wanted a gorilla for education and reproduction,” Bierman said in closing arguments Monday. “We have here people being mugged and raped in the streets and we have 16 agents dealing with a make-believe gorilla.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Guy Lewis argued that Bernal was willing to skirt strict U.S. laws governing the sale of endangered species as a way of ingratiating himself with Mexican political bosses who had influence over his career.

Researcher Anna Virtue contributed to this story.