The proprietor of an animal park in South Carolina who was featured on the favored Netflix documentary “Tiger King” was convicted in Virginia final week on wildlife trafficking costs, state prosecutors introduced.

Bhagavan Antle, higher often called Doc Antle, was charged in October 2020 with illegally buying endangered lion cubs in Virginia for show on the park, Myrtle Beach Safari, together with 9 misdemeanor animal cruelty costs. A Virginia jury convicted him on Friday of two felony counts of wildlife trafficking and two felony counts of conspiring to wildlife visitors, prosecutors stated. Mr. Antle was cleared of all of the misdemeanor costs he confronted.

Each felony depend is punishable by a most of 5 years imprisonment, according to state law. Mr. Antle is to be sentenced on Sept. 14.

Mr. Antle’s daughters Tawny Antle and Tilakam Watterson, who additionally confronted misdemeanor animal cruelty costs, had been cleared of all counts.

Mr. Antle made frequent appearances on “Tiger King,” the 2020 hit collection that supplied Americans quarantined throughout the pandemic an intimate look into the underbelly of the “big cat” commerce within the United States.

The present’s eccentric star, Joseph Maldonado-Passage, often called Joe Exotic, is serving a 21-year sentence in federal prison for a murder-for-hire plot that focused Carole Baskin, an animal-rights activist. She criticized Mr. Maldonado-Passage’s therapy of animals at his Oklahoma zoo and appeared on the Netflix present.

Mr. Antle, who’s at present going through cash laundering costs in a separate federal court docket case in South Carolina, denied “any act or conduct that could ever be considered as ‘animal cruelty,’” in a press release when the costs in Virginia had been introduced in 2020.

Jason Miyares, the state lawyer normal, stated in a news launch that the jury’s resolution “sent a message that Virginia does not tolerate wildlife animal trafficking.”

Virginia law permits the commerce of endangered wildlife, which incorporates lions, “for zoological, educational, or scientific purposes,” and for “preservation purposes,” solely with particular permission from a state board.

Mr. Antle’s lawyer, Erin Harrigan, known as the jury’s resolution to not convict Mr. Antle on the misdemeanor costs “a significant victory against spurious allegations of animal cruelty.” Ms. Harrigan stated the felony offenses on which her consumer was convicted “amount to failing to obtain a permit for otherwise entirely lawful activity,” calling them “paperwork violations.”

The lawyer normal’s workplace, then headed by Mark R. Herring, charged Mr. Antle in 2020 following a monthslong investigation into Mr. Antle’s ties with a Virginia-based zoo proprietor, Keith A. Wilson, who was additionally indicted on wildlife trafficking costs.

An on-line court docket database confirmed on Wednesday that Mr. Wilson’s case was nonetheless open.