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Paolo Viscardi, was one of the first to notice a series of raids on small locations in

the UK, which 👍 featured displays of the magnificent creatures

IN a multi-million-pound

crime wave that swept Britain, mobsters plundered small museums in the hunt 👍 for one of

the world’s most valuable substances.

But it wasn’t precious jewels or gold they were

after — it was 👍 rhino horn.

7 Rhino hunter Chumlong Lemtongthai, pictured, was hired by

the ‘Pablo Escobar of trafficking’, Vixay Keosavang, to drive up 👍 ivory prices by

shooting as many rhinos as he could Credit: Sky

7 Keosavang and his team were moving

between one 👍 and ten tonnes of wild animal products a week, worth up to £750k a day

And

new Sky documentary The Great 👍 Rhino Robbery reveals how a key figure in exposing the

illegal trade was a humble museum curator here in Britain.

Paolo 👍 Viscardi was one of

the first to notice a series of raids on small locations in the UK, which featured

👍 displays of the magnificent creatures.

After criminals discovered how easy it was to

steal horns from small museums — as well 👍 as other products made from the substance —

the scourge then spread across Europe.

Paulo — who at the time was 👍 working as Deputy

Keeper of Natural History at the Horniman Museum in South East London — said:

“Generally, nothing majorly 👍 exciting happens when working in a museum. There’s not a

lot of drama when it comes to the job — 👍 of course, until this.

‘Heads going for

£150k’

“I started to hear chatter about the thefts, and the auction price of rhino

👍 horns going up — some heads were going up for £150,000.

“So I started compiling

information about where was being hit 👍 by thefts in the hope I could warn people about

it or that I could do something, because the natural 👍 sciences museum community is so

close-knit.

“But even quicker than I could work out there was a pattern forming —

thieves 👍 were coming in, looking at the material, checking out the security, making a

plan before coming back for one thing 👍 — the horns.

“By the third or fourth theft I saw,

it was glaringly obvious that this was something much bigger 👍 than I first imagined —

and something much darker must have been going on.”

The rhino horns were traced all the

👍 way to the black market in South East Asia — where they were being ground up and sold

for consumption 👍 by a rich elite.

The horns have long been used in ancient Chinese

medicine.

But after false information was spread that it 👍 could cure cancer, the

substance was suddenly in huge demand as worried families stockpiled it to try and save

the 👍 lives of their loved ones.

Others in Vietnam and Thailand believed rhino horn to be

an aphrodisiac, as well as a 👍 treatment for fevers, infections and even mental illness,

so it was ground down into pastes and powders.

Investigators found that the 👍 powder was

even being added to alcoholic drinks at bars in South East Asia — with shots including

it flogged 👍 for £130.

In the three-part documentary, anti-trafficking expert Steve

Galster explains: “I’ve seen a lot of natural products being traded and 👍 used, but I’d

never seen anything as crazy as this.

“The rhino horn had become a trendy thing for the

nouveau 👍 riche to pull out at parties, you know, like throw it in your wine or mix with

your drugs, and 👍 let the party begin.”

Paolo, who currently works as Keeper of Natural

History at the National Museum of Ireland, adds: “You 👍 see celebrities going on weird

fad diets, you see people always trying to find the next big, weird and wonderful

👍 things — it’s fashionable, it’s a status symbol.

“And there have always been these

niche, high-value natural products — from bird’s 👍 nest soup to shark fin and elephant

ivory. They vary over time, but they are all peculiar and hard to 👍 get hold of, and

therefore exclusive and expensive.

“Now rhino horn is filling that same niche that

cocaine filled 30 or 👍 40 years ago, but the difference is, the horns have no effect, at

least not in any meaningful way.

“It’s all 👍 founded on hearsay and placebo effect, and

the excitement of doing something illegal and illicit. If you’re wealthy and powerful,

👍 people look for these kinds of things to do.”

It was this that drove up the price of

the horns from 👍 a few thousand pounds to a whopping £50,000 a kilo — with one horn worth

nearly half a million pounds, 👍 making it more valuable than gold.

And with increasingly

tough hunting laws across South Africa, where the majority of the world’s 👍 surviving

27,000 rhinos live, and harsher rules brought in by the Convention on International

Trade in Endangered Species, museums became 👍 an easier target.

Little or no

security

Essex auctioneers Sworders were the first to be hit by thieves in February

2011.

The criminals 👍 got away with a wall-mounted rhino head — then thought to be worth

a few thousand pounds — in a 👍 targeted attack.

Months later, Haslemere Educational

Museum in Surrey was plundered for its horns and thefts of rhino artefacts followed in

👍 Colchester, Ipswich, East Sussex, Norwich and Cambridge.

The thieves were targeting

locations with little or no security to hinder them — 👍 in contrast to locations like

London’s Natural History Museum, which is heavily guarded with alarms.

Thieves would

scout the museums posing 👍 as punters with a keen interest in rhinos, before returning at

night and breaking down doors or knocking through walls 👍 and smashing glass cases to get

to the horns.

Some entire stuffed rhino heads were stolen on their wall mounts, while

👍 others had the horns sawn off with knives, much like poachers have been known to do

with the animals in 👍 the wild.

And after criminals swiped all they could in the UK, the

thefts then started happening in Germany, Italy, Portugal, 👍 the Czech Republic and the

Netherlands from 2012.

Paolo and his colleagues traced the thefts and alerted museums

around the world 👍 with the help of their internal communications networks, but it would

be up to trafficking experts to take the next 👍 step.

7 Museum raiders caught on CCTV

Credit: SKY

7 Brit curator Paolo Viscardi was one of the first to notice a 👍 series of

ivory raids on small locations in the UK Credit: SKY

It was these experts that traced a

number of 👍 the robberies back to a gang operating in Ireland, known as the Rathkeale

Rovers — who had been jailed previously 👍 for petty money-making schemes.

Working in 16

European nations, alongside South African poachers and smugglers in the United States,

the thieves 👍 raided museums in the UK, stealing goods worth £57million.

Jailing 14

members of the gang, from Country Limerick, in 2024 was 👍 just the start of the operation

for the anti-trafficking teams, who, working across the UK and America, were led back

👍 to one Thai mobster.

Most of the horns trafficked out of the British museums ended up

in Laos in the store 👍 rooms of Vixay Keosavang — a former senior military officer dubbed

the “Pablo Escobar of wildlife trafficking”.

He and his team, 👍 which included sex-worker

smugglers and prolific animal traders, were moving between one and ten tonnes of

natural products a week, 👍 worth up to £750,000 a day.

Sky-high price

The sex workers

would fly to South Africa, purchase a licence and kill one 👍 rhino each.

They then

brought back the horns as stock for Keosavang’s black market trade and were paid off

with huge 👍 lump sums.

Plus to drive the price of their prized horns sky-high, the

wildlife crime kingpin hired rhino hunter Chumlong Lemtongthai 👍 to shoot as many rhinos

as he could, and bring back the horns as an extra supply.

At the time, it 👍 was legal for

individuals to apply to shoot one rhino a year — a practice that has now changed.

Lemtongthai 👍 would hire dozens of people to take part, before taking their trophy

horns.

Paolo continues: “The more rare the rhino horn 👍 becomes, and the fewer rhinos

there are out there, the more desirable it becomes to the rich customers buying and

👍 trading it.

“Rhino horns in museums have been removed from display — many of them are

now not the real ones, 👍 to stop them from being nicked, though sometimes break-ins have

seen these replicas stolen too.

“But I am sure there are 👍 stockpiles in warehouses in

South East Asia where these people are waiting for the rhino population to be wiped

out, 👍 and then they can set whatever price they like.”

Lemtongthai was eventually caught

by authorities and sentenced to 40 years’ imprisonment 👍 in 2012, but only served

four.

Ringleader Keosavang has been on the run since 2013.

Paolo concludes: “There’s

plenty of people out 👍 there who would rather see the end of a beautiful species like the

rhino to make money and to own 👍 something rare and exciting.

“We’re hoping that this

trend burns itself out and, like many other high-priced substances, something else —

👍 non-harmful, sustainable and that doesn’t involve wiping out rhinos — takes its

place.”

The Great Rhino Robbery airs tonight on Sky 👍 Showcase at 9pm and is available to

stream on Now.

7 Anti-trafficking expert Steve Galster said: 'The rhino horn had become

👍 a trendy thing for the nouveau riche to pull out at parties' Credit: Sky

7 Rhino horn

has long been used 👍 in ancient methods of Chinese medicine Credit: SKY

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