Guilty plea entered on May 6.
Source summary
A
Philadelphia man,
Robert Berndt, was sentenced to 38 months in prison and three years of supervised release after pleading guilty to conspiring to create and distribute “animal crush videos” that depicted torture and sexual abuse of monkeys. According to court documents, conspirators used encrypted chat applications to funnel money to individuals in
Indonesia to commit the acts on camera. The case was investigated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the FBI and prosecuted by the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division and the
U.S. Attorney’s Office for
the Southern District of
Ohio.