# Member Forums > Herp Science News/Herp News >  850 snakes found at New York animal control officer's house

## MasonC2K

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/...cmp=latestnews

Copy and paste: 




> SHIRLEY, N.Y.   Authorities in New York say they've found hundreds of snakes including two 6-foot Burmese pythons at an animal control officer's house.
> 
> Local and county officials raided the home in Shirley on Thursday. Officials estimate 850 snakes were found inside two garages.
> 
> Homeowner Richard Parrinello is a Brookhaven town animal control officer. He faces charges of owning the pythons and violating town codes by running a business at his home and without a permit.
> 
> Newsday reports officials began investigating whether Parrinello was working while on disability from his town job.
> 
> Authorities say he's cooperating. A man who answered the phone at a number listed on Parrinello's website said he had no comment.
> ...


How much you wanna bet most of those snakes are "confiscated" by said animal control officer.

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## crazypythonlady

It is sad, We will see what happens like if he had a permit for the burms which he probably did being he was in animal control. The thing is he owns Snakeman Exotics and I have bought atleast 2 balls from him and they were both in great health so I dont think neglect at anything to do with it. It troubles me that they are saying he ran an illegal business when he has a website with his name and number and frequents the reptile expos in NY so it does not seem plausible his job was unaware that he ran a business selling reptiles on the side. He website states he has been in business since before 2010. I hope everything works out for him and they do not euthanize any of his snakes or other reptiles.

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## Aztec4mia

*CNN) -- An animal control officer on disability kept 850 snakes, including two 6-foot Burmese pythons, while running an illegal snake business out of his suburban New York home, according to authorities who made the discovery on Thursday.
Richard Parrinello, of Brookhaven, New York, kept the snakes in his detached garage, all neatly stacked in containers and at the right temperature, according to Roy Gross, chief of the Suffolk County SPCA.
Burmese pythons are illegal in New York, and Parrinello's were taken from the house to a reptile sanctuary in Massachusetts while the rest of the snakes are still in his garage, according to Jack Krieger, communications director for the Town of Brookhaven on Long Island.
Gross said all the snakes appeared to be in good health and there was no animal abuse or neglect.
"It was a well-maintained facility, it was very clean and organized, it was a business," Krieger said.


Parrinello kept an online website, "Snakeman's Exotics," which advertised a collection of pythons, boa constrictors and hognose snakes available for sale both domestically and internationally.
After weeks of investigation into alleged workers compensation fraud, the town of Brookhaven, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Suffolk County Police and the SPCA executed a search warrant in Parrinello's home, where he lives with his wife and 10-year-old son, according to a news release from Brookhaven.
Undercover investigators spoke to Parrinello, who claimed to have $500,000 in inventory stored on the premises, including snakes, turtles and turtle eggs, the news release said.
Authorities also say they found a few tarantulas and a couple of freezers with frozen mice and alligator carcasses.


Krieger said Parrinello wasn't arrested or charged with any criminal activity, but he was running a business out of his residence in a residential area, which is a violation of the town code.
Town Law Department officials are still investigating and will likely issue numerous violations in the coming days.*


Looks like he got to keep the rest of the snakes. he had to have known about the burms be illegal, they were banned in NY before the reptile ban.

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## wolfy-hound

There's a lot of folks with "home businesses" who are unaware of local codes, or who do so because they've been told "It's fine as long as you're not making a nuisance." Doesn't mean he's right to violate code, but a lot of places have various codes that contradict each other, and it's impossible to sort out all of the junk.

With the burmese, I would bet he was supposed to euthanize them or turn them over to some place and just wanted them badly enough to keep them even though he knows they're illegal. Or perhaps he thought he might be able to sell them to legal people? No telling.

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## sho220

Too disabled to work but he can care for 850 reptiles? Okay... :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):

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## Pythonfriend

that sucks.


they should leave the snakes with him (at least the ones that he is allowed to own) and just put a moratorium on snake sales until the legal details are resolved.

its the same in Germany. People start hobbies, the hobbies grow, and if the hobbies start generating revenue its fine as long as the costs are still bigger than the revenue. But there comes a point when you need to turn it into a proper company and pay taxes and get the financial stuff and bookkeeping and bureaucracy right. 

i guess he missed the right moment to turn it into a company, and now instead of a pretty standard tax audit, he got a sting operation + bust. 

if they ceise the snakes, we could see some terrible price undercutting for some morphs if they eventually hit the market. (euthanizing high-end morphs and healthy snakes would be a terrible destructive sin, i consider it unlikely.)

i hope for the best, which would be that he can keep his snakes and can soon sell some on his own terms, and pay the back taxes and fines and somehow turn it into a legitimate company. 

if it gets too big, better be CEO and make it a company, even if you still see it as a hobby. even if it will be a tiny company with most profits flowing back into the collection.

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## Stewart_Reptiles

> that sucks.
> 
> 
> they should leave the snakes with him (at least the ones that he is allowed to own) and just put a moratorium on snake sales until the legal details are resolved.
> 
> its the same in Germany. People start hobbies, the hobbies grow, and if the hobbies start generating revenue its fine as long as the costs are still bigger than the revenue. But there comes a point when you need to turn it into a proper company and pay taxes and get the financial stuff and bookkeeping and bureaucracy right. 
> 
> i guess he missed the right moment to turn it into a company, and now instead of a pretty standard tax audit, he got a sting operation + bust. 
> 
> ...


And you missed an important part which is the one where he owns some animals "ILLEGALLY" among other thing.

*Ignorance of the law (in his case he is well aware of the law) is not an excuse and people like that hurt the entire industry simply because all they care about is themselves.* 

Additionally he brought this on himself (if you can take care of 800+ snakes I am pretty sure you can work your job as animal control officer) he got caught and it got worse than what he was originally investigated for.



> Authorities spotted the snakes during an investigation into whether Parrinello was working while on disability leave from his town job.


If he had played by the rules he would not be having this type of issue making all snake keepers look bad because of yet again some bad press.

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_STjepkes_ (09-22-2013)

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## Pythonfriend

you can totally be on disability for one specific job but working a different job....     if you do it right and do not keep it secret.

if you work in construction and your spine goes bad, you may be actually and legally unable to do the job. but you can still do stuff in front of the PC and over the phone. 

here we need details, snake keeping is quite forgiving meaning you can work slowly at your own pace. we dont know, and i know foxnews cannot be trusted with anything, not even the weather report. something like multiple sclerosis or heart disease can easily knock you out of many stressful or physically demanding 8-to-5 jobs while keeping you able to work different jobs. Thats why i didnt mention that, insufficient information to even speculate. Sometimes a health problem legitimately causes insurances to trigger and to pay out and the person is forced to take on a different job and ends up earning more there, and there is nothing illegal about it. 

for me the core problem is that he did not have a company or business registered while running an operation with significant cashflow. if his snakes are really worth 500000 dollars (based on foxnews, who do make stuff up) and he did not own a company and is not CEO, thats a real problem with bookkeeping, taxes and so on.

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## Xaila

> you can totally be on disability for one specific job but working a different job....     if you do it right and do not keep it secret.
> 
> if you work in construction and your spine goes bad, you may be actually and legally unable to do the job. but you can still do stuff in front of the PC and over the phone. 
> 
> here we need details, snake keeping is quite forgiving meaning you can work slowly at your own pace. we dont know, and i know foxnews cannot be trusted with anything, not even the weather report. something like multiple sclerosis or heart disease can easily knock you out of many stressful or physically demanding 8-to-5 jobs while keeping you able to work different jobs. Thats why i didnt mention that, insufficient information to even speculate. Sometimes a health problem legitimately causes insurances to trigger and to pay out and the person is forced to take on a different job and ends up earning more there, and there is nothing illegal about it. 
> 
> for me the core problem is that he did not have a company or business registered while running an operation with significant cashflow. if his snakes are really worth 500000 dollars (based on foxnews, who do make stuff up) and he did not own a company and is not CEO, thats a real problem with bookkeeping, taxes and so on.


I'm holding out for more details myself since I don't know this guy's exact medical problems, but taking care of snakes can be more physically strenuous than you'd think, and it's a lot of working with your hands (especially with cleaning).  I have a kind of rare genetic condition that affects all the connective tissue in my body.  My joints are more fragile than a normal person and repetitive motion (like marathon-cleaning tubs) can cause me a lot of pain.  I definitely wouldn't say I'm 'disabled' but I don't think I could ever manage a huge collection like that.  Then again, he's married and may have had other people associated with the business to help.  Media twists these stories so much it's hard to tell what the truth is.

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## Pythonfriend

pure speculation: multiple sklerosis often requires a shot or two per week of interferon, and these shots have severe side effects knocking you out for half a day or a whole day, sometimes for two days. Also you get temporary numbness of limbs. My dad, under excellent medical care, went temporarily blind on one eye several times. Vision came back each time. 




> I definitely wouldn't say I'm 'disabled' but I don't think I could ever manage a huge collection like that.  Then again, he's married and may have had other people associated with the business to help.  Media twists these stories so much it's hard to tell what the truth is.


You can work a snake collection slowly, or during the night, and when side-effects from meds knock you out for 36 hours you can get up at 3 am and replace water bowls and do spot cleaning. just pure assumptions, but still, snakes are forgiving. An 8 to 5 job would not be so forgiving if you randomly miss 2 days and show up at 3 am to do some work. if you miss lets say thursdays every other week.

much data is missing, the only thing i know so far: if your BP collection gets seriously valuable and if you sell via a website, better make it a company and be CEO and get your books in order and pay taxes. But the whole thing about inability to do one job while working a different job, i just say its highly complicated and it can only be judged if you have all the information. I just gave a random example, i know enough diseases that kick you out of one job and trigger insurances and leave you able to do a different job. At my school, a sports teacher had a bad accident causing spinal injury and paralysis of the legs. In a wheelchair, he was unable to continue as a sports teacher, but habilitated at university to become a professor. He still does lots of sports, like wheelchair basketball, but is now teaching future sports teachers. And yes, his condition makes it impossible for him to do his former job. But as a university professor, he now earns much more.

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## Neal

> Too disabled to work but he can care for 850 reptiles? Okay...


Do you know what his disability is? NO so why are you so quick to judge? I know a girl who is disability because she's dyslexic, but if she wanted to she could breed/sell snakes. Now while I don't know how that would affect her disability, she still can't get a regular job because of her being dyslexic. So don't be so quick to judge somebody.

Now while he was probably more then capable of working, he wanted extra cash on the side and it's pretty crappy that he even had illegal animals when he should of known better.

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## Pythonfriend

In Germany we have no illegal animals, but there are minimum requirements for keeping certain animals. 

For ball python breeding it means that for adult BPs, you need modular/stacked terrariums. No tubs. Two hides. Lots of volume per enclosure.

But at least in Germany, everyone can keep anything, no species is banned. You only need enough knowledge, time, space, and money, and you can keep anything. if you have enough knowledge to keep elephants, and enough time to set it up properly, and the many acres it needs to work, and the financial stability to keep it running, then you can keep a herd of elephants in Germany, no problem. 

No species is banned, its just that many species (including ball pythons) are regulated and you need to meet requirements. With enough time and money, there is no limit, and one guy here keeps 12 albino lions and breeds them. No problem if his husbandry is excellent.

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## DSpythons

Well, my good friend is disabled from PTSD and servere anxiety and she gets paid from disability but she still qualifies to work a certain amount of hours doing certain thing approved by the state and breeding her dogs and snakes is one of those "jobs" she can get side money from since disability does not pay that much to survive. So he could legally be disabled and breed snakes. 

Anyway, I am so sick of CNN reporting about snakes everyday. First it was the 40 snakes in a motel, then a snake in a beer case, then a snake at a Starbucks and a snake it someones car. Now its this. They have nothing better to do.. Next time I find a spider on my ceiling I will be sure to call CNN to make a news headline about it.  Shouldnt they be reporting important things that go on like crimes or politics? Seriously missing person cases do not get the headlines that a snake in a Starbucks toilet gets.

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## Doggey75

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-...n.y-mans-home/

This is kinda old. But, I just found it and wanted to share it.

People in the news should really do research before they post this stuff... I'm no expert. But, I believe Burms only grow to about 20 ft depending on how you keep it. News always seems to cover only the negative sides of reptiles.

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## bfirecat

News is definitely negative, especially when it comes to animals in general.

Which headline sounds more interesting?
"Dozens of giant man-eating python found in suburban house" 
"Happy pythons kept in organized cages found in suburban house"

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## Kensa

I also enjoy how the liken the fact he kept Burms to the deaths of two boys in New Brunswick by an African Rock Python. Burms and African Rocks come from two different continents, but they are pretty much the same snake, right?

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## Doggey75

> I also enjoy how the liken the fact he kept Burms to the deaths of two boys in New Brunswick by an African Rock Python. Burms and African Rocks come from two different continents, but they are pretty much the same snake, right?


From what I know. African Rock Pythons are alot more aggressive

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## sho220

> *Do you know what his disability is? NO so why are you so quick to judge?* I know a girl who is disability because she's dyslexic, but if she wanted to she could breed/sell snakes. Now while I don't know how that would affect her disability, she still can't get a regular job because of her being dyslexic. So don't be so quick to judge somebody.
> 
> *Now while he was probably more then capable of working, he wanted extra cash on the side* and it's pretty crappy that he even had illegal animals when he should of known better.


lol... :Good Job:

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