In February 2018, Chinese national Guan Zong Chen was sentenced to 19 months in prison for orchestrating a scheme to illegally export approximately US$700,000 worth of endangered wildlife products, including items made from rhinoceros horn, elephant ivory, and coral, from the US to China. In addition to the prison sentence, Chen was ordered to forfeit the seized ivory and pay US$700,000 in substitute assets. Despite a prior conviction in China in 2009 for trafficking ivory carvings purchased in the US, which prevented him from traveling internationally, Chen continued his illicit trade by enlisting others to legitimately purchase wildlife products at auction houses across several US states and smuggle them illegally back to China. In many jurisdictions, it is legal to trade wildlife products such as ivory domestically if they were acquired prior to the introduction of CITES regulations – but not to traffic them internationally. Chen’s co-conspirators included Chinese national Jin Jie Yang, who pleaded guilty in 2014 and was sentenced to time served in 2015, and Carla Marsh, a Massachusetts shipping business owner, who also pleaded guilty and received one year of probation in 2016.