LOS ANGELES : Prosecutor Pleads Guilty to Smuggling Rare Plants

An Alameda County prosecutor pleaded guilty in Los Angeles on Monday to charges that he smuggled more than 200 endangered tropical pitcher plants from Indonesia and Malaysia into the United States.

Eric Von Geldern, a deputy district attorney in the Oakland Municipal Courts, admitted that he and two other members of the Bay Area Carnivorous Plant Society traveled to the Southeast Asian nations and mailed or brought the plants back to the United States without an exporting permit.

Von Geldern, 38, of Emeryville; Oakland doctor William Baumgartl, 36, the society’s president, and sports card dealer Curtis Tom, 33, of Sunnyvale, each pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of conspiring to import endangered plants.

Each defendant faces a maximum of two years in prison. Sentencing is scheduled for June 30. Von Geldern, Baumgartl and Tom flew to Malaysia and Indonesia last September to acquire wild, living specimens of tropical pitcher plants, according to court documents. They mailed some back to relatives and friends and brought the rest back with them on an airplane.

In each case, the defendants failed to indicate the true contents of their packages, telling U.S. authorities that the boxes contained gifts, T-shirts, wood figures, ceramic figures, handicrafts or engineering products, according to the court papers. They were charged in Los Angeles because some of the plants were flown to Los Angeles International Airport, documents show.