Bird Smuggler Sentenced to Prison

A former Playboy Mansion animal keeper convicted of helping run a $1-million bird-smuggling ring was sentenced Monday to 37 months in prison.

Theodora Swanson, 36, was convicted in July of helping a group of high school buddies steal rare cockatoo eggs from the birds’ nests in the Australian outback. The thieves then sneaked the eggs under their shirts into this country.

Hatched here by bird sellers masquerading as breeders, the parrot-like birds sell for more than $10,000 to bird collectors.

But details of how bumbling birdnappers struggled to fill “egg vest” underwear--and then sweated it out when chirping cockatoos sometimes hatched in front of puzzled customs agents--left a jury in downtown federal court agog.

The eight-year smuggling operation, masterminded by Swanson’s boyfriend, came to an end when Australian national park rangers noticed several young cockatoo hunters whacking sticks against eucalyptus tree trunks during an egg-snatching expedition.

One inept smuggler was even wearing his vest backward when he was caught, meaning that his loot would have been crushed if he sat down, according to testimony.

The egg thefts are galling to Australians, who consider wild cockatoos an endangered species and prohibit their removal from the country for commercial purposes. An international treaty also limits their importation to other countries.

Swanson, tearful as she was being sentenced, had steadfastly denied any role in the smuggling. Her newly hired attorney, Mark Werksman, vowed to appeal the sentencing.

He told U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon that Swanson was swept into the cockatoo conspiracy by the “Svengali effect” of her boyfriend, wildlife expert William Wegner, 44. Wegner, of New Paltz, N.Y., was sentenced in December to five years in prison. He was one of six defendants who earlier pleaded guilty to smuggling.

Prosecutors Robert Anderson and Daniel Goodman had sought up to 57 months for Swanson, a former Malibu resident who now lives in Memphis.

During Swanson’s trial, several bird smugglers in Wegner’s ring sang like canaries, opening an unusual door to the world of animal thievery.

They testified that Wegner recruited a group of former New Paltz high school friends to work for him as tree-climbing nest robbers and egg couriers. Eventually, so many young people from the town wanted to get in on the lucrative business that competing smuggling groups were organized. On one occasion, rival smugglers even bumped into one another in the outback.

“Naive fools” was the way Kenyon characterized the smugglers Monday.

“These nice young people decided to play thief. They’re responsible for what they thieved,” he said.