Incredible story of how a Brit exposed multi-million pound crime wave of mobsters raiding museums for rhino horns
IN a multi-million-pound crime wave that swept Britain, mobsters plundered museums in the hunt for the most valuable substance on the planet.
But it wasn’t precious jewels or gold they were after — it was rhino horn.
And new Sky documentary The Great Rhino Robbery reveals how the man who busted the illegal trade was a humble museum curator here in Britain.
Paolo Viscardi, was one of the first to notice a series of raids on small locations in the UK, which featured displays of the magnificent creatures.
After criminals discovered how easy it was to steal horns from small museums — as well as other products made from the substance — the scourge then spread across Europe.
Paulo said: “Generally, nothing majorly exciting happens when working in a museum, there’s not a lot of drama when it comes to the job — of course, until this.
“I started to hear chatter about the thefts, and the auction price of rhino horns going up — the guide price to sale price were offset by an order of magnitude, some heads were going up for £150,000.
“So I started compiling information about where was being hit by thefts in the hopes that I could warn people about it or that I could do something, because the natural sciences museum community is so close-knit.
“But even quicker than I could work there was a pattern forming — thieves were coming in, looking at the material, checking out the security, making a plan before coming back for one thing — the horns.
“By the third or fourth theft I saw, it was glaringly obvious that this was something much bigger than I first imagined — and something much darker must have been going on.”
Far from the regional museums, the rhino horns were being traced to South East Asia – where the most elite black market clientele were trading it to be ground up and ingested.
The horn has long been used in ancient methods of Chinese medicine, thanks to its high keratin make-up (the same substance in human nails and hair).
But after false information was spread that it could cure cancer, the once rarely-traded substance was in huge demand as worried families stockpiled to save their loved ones from sickness.
For others in Vietnam and Thailand, rhino horn was labelled an aphrodisiac, as well as a treatment for fevers, infections, and even mental illness, and ground down into pastes and powders.
Investigators on the case found that around South East Asia, the powder was even being added to alcoholic drinks at bars – with shots including the keratin-packed powder flogged for £130.
And unbeknownst to its consumers, ground up with them would be the arsenic and chlorine products used to protect some older horn specimens stolen from the museums.
Anti-trafficking expert Steve Galster explains in the three-part programme: “I’ve seen a lot of natural products being traded and used, I’d never seen anything as crazy as this
“The rhino horn had become a trendy thing for the nouveau riche to pull out at parties, you know, like throw it in your wine or mix with your drugs, and let the party begin.”
Paolo adds: “You see celebrities going on weird fad diets, you see people always trying to find the next big, weird and wonderful things – it’s fashionable, it’s a status symbol.
“And there have always been these niche, high-value natural products – from birds nest soup to shark fin and elephant ivory – they vary over time but are all peculiar and hard to get hold of, and therefore exclusive and expensive.
“You used to see people walking around with their drug’s paraphernalia on necklaces to show off their status, because it was a valuable commodity and you had to be connected to get it.
“Now rhino horn is filling that same niche that cocaine filled 30 or 40 years ago, but the difference is, the horns have no effects, at least not in any meaningful way.
“It’s all founded on pure hearsay and placebo effect, and the excitement of doing something illegal and illicit. If you’re wealthy and powerful, people look for these kinds of things to do.”
It was this that drove up the price of the horns from a few thousands up to a whopping £65,000 a kilo – with one horn worth well over half a million pounds, making it more valuable than gold.
And with increasingly tough hunting laws across South Africa, where the majority of the world’s surviving 27,000 rhinos live, and harsher rules brought in by CITES, museums were an easier target.
It was Essex auctioneers Sworders were the first to be hit by thieves in 2011, who got away with a wall-mounted rhino head – then thought to be worth a few thousand pounds – in a swift, targeted attack.
Months later, Haslemere Museum in Surrey was plundered for its horns and further thefts of rhino artefacts followed in Colchester, Ipswich, East Sussex, Norwich and Cambridge.
The thieves were targeting locations with little or no security to hinder them – in contrast to locations like London’s Natural History Museum, which would be heavily guarded and well alarmed.
Thieves would scout out the museums as punters with a keen interest in rhinos, before breaking down doors – or knocking through walls – in the night and breaking glass cases to get to the horns.
Some entire stuffed rhino heads were stolen on their wall mounts, while others had the horns sawed off with knives, much like poachers have been known for with the live wild animals.
And after getting all they could in the UK, the thefts then started happening in Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands from 2012.
Paolo and his colleagues traced the thefts and alerted museums around the world with the help of their internal communications networks, but it would be up to trafficking experts to take the next step.
It was these experts that traced a number of the robberies back to a gang operating in Ireland, known as the Rathkeale Rovers – who had before been jailed for petty money-making schemes.
Working in 16 European nations, alongside South African poachers and smugglers in the United States, the thieves raided museums in the UK out of £57million worth of goods.
Jailing 14 members of the gang from Country Limerick in 2016 was just the start of the operation for the anti-trafficking teams, who working across the UK and America were led back to one Thai mobster.
Most of the horns trafficked out of the British museums ended up in the store rooms of Vixay Keosavang – a former senior military officer dubbed the “Pablo Escobar of wildlife trafficking”.
He and his team, which included sex-worker smugglers and prolific animal traders, were moving between one and ten tonnes of natural products a week, worth up to £750k a day.
And to drive the price of their prized horns sky-high, the wildlife kingpin hired rhino hunter Chumlong Lemtongthai to shoot as many rhinos as he could, and bring back the horns as an extra supply.
At the time, it was legal for individuals to apply to shoot one rhino a year – a practice that has now changed.
Lemtongthai would hire dozens of people to take part, before taking their trophy horns.
Paolo continues: “The more rare the rhino horn became, and the fewer rhinos there are out there, the more desirable it becomes to the rich customers who are buying and trading it.
“Rhino horns in museums have been removed from display – many of them are now not the real ones to stop them from being nicked, though sometimes break-ins have seen these replicas stolen too.
“But I am sure there are stockpiles in warehouses in South East Asia where these people are waiting for the rhino population to be wiped out, and then they can set whatever price they like on those.”
While Lemtongthai was eventually caught by authorities, and sentenced to 40 years imprisonment but only serving four, ringleader Keosavang is still on the run after being dished out a sentence.
Paolo concludes: “There’s plenty of big-headed people out there who would rather see the end of a beautiful species like the rhino, to make money and to own something rare and exciting.
“We’re hoping that this trend burns itself out and like many other high-priced substances, something else – non-harmful, sustainable and doesn’t involve wiping out rhinos – takes its place.”
The Great Rhino Robbery airs tonight on Sky Showcase at 9pm, and is available to stream on NOW.