Anaheim Couple Who Moved Money for Rhino Horn and Tiger Pelt Deals Get Probation
Linh Luu and Kevin Le processed $51,100 for a Vietnam-based wildlife trafficker and took $12,000 in cash from an undercover agent at a Target parking lot.
A husband and wife from Anaheim, California, were sentenced on Oct. 23, 2026, to three years of probation and a $10,000 fine each for handling the money in wildlife deals that moved bear gallbladders and cougar bones out of Oregon and brought rhino horn, lion teeth and a tiger pelt in.
Linh Luu and Kevin Le pleaded guilty the same day in federal court in Eugene, Oregon, to violating the Lacey Act, the Justice Department said. From September 2019 through May 2021, they processed $51,100 in payments for a trafficker based in Vietnam, according to the department.
The government did not say the couple killed any animals. It said they fueled the illegal market by processing the money that connected buyers and sellers. Its sentencing memorandum in Luu’s case (No. 6:26-cr-00297) lays out each deal, and one of the buyers was an undercover U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent.
Cash at a Target parking lot
The memo says the trafficker, identified only as “Person #1,” told the agent there was an extra fee to route money through Luu and Le and described the early shipments as a way to build trust and test customs before multimillion-dollar deals. The couple handled payments for about half of the trafficker’s shipments, according to the memo.
The small transactions came first: $225 in fall 2019 for five black bear gallbladders sent from Oregon to Vietnam, and $1,435 in September 2020 for four lion teeth from Tanzania.
Then came rhino horn. The agent and the trafficker agreed on $21,801 for two pieces, with a $12,000 cash down payment. The cash handoff was set for Garden Grove, California. On Dec. 18, 2020, the agent met Luu and Le in the parking lot of a Target store and handed over the money, which Luu counted, the memo says. Le warned that bank transfers leave a trail, and Luu talked about U.S. banking rules for transactions over $10,000, according to the government. The rest was wired in two transfers of $4,900 and $4,901. The horn arrived in Oregon disguised as a household decoration.
In March 2021, the agent wired two payments of $4,195 each for another piece of rhino horn and $4,000 for a tiger pelt, the memo says.
Why the sentence was probation
The Lacey Act carries up to five years in prison. But under the plea deal, the government recommended the low end of the guidelines. Its calculation subtracted points for accepting responsibility, for having no criminal record and for agreeing to resolve the case early, leaving an advisory range of zero to six months.
The memo notes that lions, tigers and both rhino species are protected under the Endangered Species Act, and black bear has been listed in Appendix II of the CITES treaty since 1992. Le was charged in a separate case, No. 6:26-cr-00298.
