The other six charged by federal prosecutors are connected to a Hong Kong-based company that supplies the monkeys to labs in Florida and Texas for research. The group is now being accused of purchasing the monkeys when they couldn’t fulfill orders from their breeding grounds.

The long-tailed macaques, also known as crab-eating macaques, have become an endangered species as of this year. It is speculated that the macaques were being used for testing the COVID vaccines. Therefore, labs worldwide have been trying to acquire these monkeys at an alarming rate. The macaques are protected under international trade law and you need special permissions to import these animals into the United States.

One of the assailants, Masphal Kry, is the deputy director of Wildlife and Biodiversity in Cambodia who was arrested on Wednesday at New York’s JFK Airport. Kry and a director general were both heading to Panama for an international meeting to discuss the regulation of trading endangered species. Now each of the men is facing 145 years in prison.