2 Men Convicted of Smuggling Live Snakes in Their Underwear

The two men couldn’t wiggle out of this one--not when customs agents found snakes writhing in their pantyhose.

That’s why a pair of wildlife collectors caught at a Texas border crossing with reptiles in their underwear pleaded guilty to smuggling Monday in Los Angeles federal court.

Paul James Lynum, 24, of Long Beach and Jon Sterling Nelson, 33, of Pacific Palisades admitted that they tied snakes into pantyhose and tucked them in their groin area as they crossed the border two years ago at Eagle Pass, Texas.

Other snakes were found hidden in their boots and in a pickup truck after customs inspectors noticed that bulges in the pair’s pants were wiggling.

Three bull snakes, six green rat snakes, two Sinaloa milk snakes, a Nuevo Leon king snake, a Nelson milk snake and a boa constrictor were found after inspectors ordered the pair to drop their trousers.

“I don’t think the boa constrictor was one of those in their pants,” said Robert Dugdale, an assistant federal prosecutor. “Boa constrictors squeeze.”

Lynum confirmed that the boa was not one of the reptiles in the pantyhose. But he had little else to add after the hearing in downtown Los Angeles.

“I’m not saying anything until after the judge says it’s over,” Lynum said.

Prosecutors said that the Texas border crossing agent had initially suspected that Lynum and Nelson were hiding narcotics.

“But drugs don’t move around like that,” said Dugdale.

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Investigators said Lynum and Nelson had spent two weeks snake-hunting in the Mexican desert before returning to the United States on July 31, 1995.

A four-count indictment handed down last January by a federal grand jury in Texas charged the pair with illegal importation of wildlife, smuggling of contraband, failure to declare fish or wildlife and the unlawful importation of a boa constrictor.

Under terms of Monday’s guilty pleas, the pair are scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 1 to three years probation by Los Angeles federal Judge Audrey B. Collins--provided they pay about $5,500 each in restitution to the San Antonio Zoo. The snakes, all nonpoisonous, now reside in the zoo’s reptile house.

“We kept them there because we didn’t want the evidence slithering away,” Dugdale said.

One of the snakes died after the smugglers’ arrest. But the surviving 13 will probably be returned to the Mexican desert and released.

The snake-hunting expedition violated a 1951 Mexican federal hunting law and a 1988 ecological protection law, according to Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office.