Kreatsoulas, who had been searching for prehistoric shark teeth in the region for two decades, appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, chatting about his dives and the once-in-a-lifetime discovery of the giant elephantine jawbone. Nicknamed Captain John, he was known for taking amateur fossil enthusiasts on excursions along the Gulf Coast to hotspots for digging up remnants of extinct species.
A few months later, Kreatsoulas is back in the spotlight for less flattering reasons.
On February 28, the Lee County resident pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to traffic wildlife and nine counts of falsifying records in violation of the Lacey Act, which prohibits trafficking of illegally taken wildlife, fish, and plants.
Prosecutors claimed that between 2015 and 2019, Kreatsoulas plucked turtles from the wild in Florida and shipped them to clients as far away as Germany and Hong Kong via Miami International Airport — all while falsely claiming they were "captive-bred." The fossil hunter faces up to five years in federal prison for each count, though sentences for similar wildlife-smuggling crimes typically do not yield maximum prison time for first-time federal offenders in South Florida.
His sentencing hearing is scheduled for May 17.
While precise figures on the lucrative turtle trade can be hard to find, one University of Michigan doctoral candidate who studies the trade estimated that commercial exports for mud turtles in the U.S. have exploded since the late 1990s. Freshwater turtles are often shipped to China, where they are harvested for food or traditional medicine products in addition to being sold as exotic pets.
Prosecutors say Kreatsoulas along with two co-conspirators captured and collected various species of mud turtles, including three-stripe mud turtles and Florida mud turtles, which live in ponds and ditches across Florida. Investigators cataloged communications between the trio, which showed how Kreatsoulas used his expertise in hunting southern Florida's waterways to collect thousands of animals to be sold overseas.
In several messages, Kreatsoulas appeared to tell his partners he was trying to accumulate enough three-stripe mud turtles to fulfill large orders. The messages document his hunting outings as he exported captured turtles to China, including a 500-turtle shipment falsely marked as captive-bred to Guangzhou, a port city northwest of Hong Kong. At one point, he implored one of his partners to look into a bulk sale of Central American mud turtles, saying, "Offer out to your Chinese for $3,500-$4,000. See if you can move them."
One proposed sale showed Kreatsoulas offering Florida mud turtles for $75 each. Some online shops show three-stripe mud turtles for sale for $40 each, though the price can climb much higher.
The December indictment alleges that Kreatsoulas invoiced more than 2,000 three-stripe mud turtles for export with false labels. He marked more than 1,000 turtles of the same species for interstate shipment with bogus labels, according to the indictment.
The last message documented in the indictment shows Kreatsoulas saying in July 2021, "Bad news, two investigators from FWC showed up yesterday with a subpoena. I had to tell them the truth about those invoices. I can't afford a lawyer. Sorry, I tried to help, it just did not work out."
A striped mud turtle pokes its head out of a shell in Osceola County, Florida.
Photo by Peter Paplanus/Flickr
Three-stripe and Florida mud turtles are not listed as endangered, though they are subject to state and federal restrictions on commercialization and shipping.
At the time of the turtle-exporting violations, Kreatsoulas sold wholesale wildlife (including protected species of reptiles) to domestic and international customers through his shop Omni Reptiles in Alva, a rural& town on the Caloosahatchee River. State records show he runs Fossil Junkies, his fossil scuba-dive charter.
While Omni Reptiles' website no longer appears active, older versions archived online reveal a biography posted in 2019 that described Kreatsoulas as "the little boy who loved turtles." Having grown up in Southwest Florida, he has explored the Gulf Coast and local wildlife since childhood.
"Every week I would ask the farmers to save all of the baby and smaller sized turtles that they caught in their ponds for me," Kreatsoulas wrote on the site. "Back at home, I had tanks and ponds set up to keep all the turtles."
Kreatsoulas wrote that his hobby became a full-time job.
"Eventually I started breeding some of the turtles. Three-stripe mud turtles were the first turtles I set up to breed," he wrote. "After doing so I realized how easy and fun it was. I then started venturing into other areas and started breeding snakes and chameleons too."
A screenshot of the website from 2018 shows a variety of wildlife for sale, including snakes, amphibians, tarantulas, and tropical fish. A "Turtles for Sale" section lists turtles of various ages and sizes, including baby Florida snapping turtles, baby chicken turtles, and Oaxaca mud turtles.
A local turtle breeder who knew Kreatsoulas through the fossil-hunting community said news of the charges came as a shock.
"He's like a really nice guy. He's like a criminally nice guy," the breeder told NBC2.
Last November, Kreatsoulas' fossil-hunting exploits yielded what may have been the rarest find of a lifetime of scouring the depths of Florida rivers and lakes for unusual specimens. What he thought was a heavy log turned out to be the lower jawbone of a mammoth, a large elephant-like genus that went extinct several thousand years ago.
Live Science's Lydia Smith reported that the fossil may have come from a Columbian mammoth, a species with 13-foot-tusks, which roamed North America as far back as 2.6 million years ago and is believed to have died out roughly 10,000 years ago.
