PHILADELPHIA _ Loren Varga loved tigers.
He loved them so much he coveted the pelt of a dead one to decorate the floor of his home.
And on Wednesday, that years-long fixation landed the 61-year-old New Jersey man behind bars for six hours.
A federal judge sentenced Varga _ an avid world travel, antiques collector and radiological technician at Merck and the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital _ to one day in prison and two years' probation. It was the culmination of an embarrassing year that also saw him caught in a sting operation trying to illegally purchase a $6,800 tiger-skin rug and then later pleading guilty to his crimes.
Standing before U.S. District Judge Anita Brody in a Philadelphia courtroom, he swore a lifelong adoration for the endangered wild cats and admitted he now knew that trying to buy tiger pelts is illegal under federal wildlife conservation laws.
But prosecutors balked at his claims of ignorance and his show of contrition. In fact, Varga had been caught, but not prosecuted, in a similar sting operation 17 years earlier. And when U.S. Fish and Wildlife agents showed up at his house in Franklin Park, Somerset County in June, he handed them an authentic-tiger skin purse he had acquired on eBay at some point in between.
"To hear him talk about this love of tigers is truly appalling," Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Beam Winter said. "This is a man who did something really wrong to a terribly depleted natural beauty that is one day going to be gone because of people like him."
In the end, Brody cut Varga a break. Federal sentencing guidelines called for him to be imprisoned for up to six months. But by the time he was hauled from the courtroom by U.S. Marshals on Tuesday he faced only hours in a cell before the courthouse's closing time and his anticipated release.
The judge said her main concern was deterring poachers and purchasers like Varga in the future.
The population of wild tigers has been decimated over the last century by poaching and habitat destruction. In 2015, conservationists estimated that the global wild tiger population has plummeted to less than 4,000 _ down from around 100,000 at the start of the 20th century.
But despite conservationists' efforts to protect them, a thriving global black market for tiger parts persists.
In China, tiger bone wine _ made from the creature's crushed bones, left to macerate for years in rice liqueur _ is a status symbol. Tiger pelts, sold in the form of decorative rugs, go for thousands of dollars on closely guarded private Facebook groups and auction sites in the United States. And while federal prosecutions of people seeking to buy or sell tiger parts in violation of the U.S. Endangered Species Act are rare, they are not unheard of.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife agents in Philadelphia discovered Varga earlier this year as he contacted dealers over the Internet from his email account at Merck. One dealer warned him that buying and selling tiger skins was illegal.
"I'm still interested," Varga responded according to court filings.
When an undercover agent this spring offered to sell Varga the hide of a tiger killed in 1985 _ a dozen years after they were placed on the Endangered Species List _ he agreed to drive to Pennsylvania to make the purchase.
In court Tuesday, his attorney, Kevin A. Buchan described Varga as a fundamentally decent man who let his passions for exotic locales and rare antiques get the better of his judgment in this case.
He worked days at Merck and nights and weekends at the hospital to fund his passions and the elaborate decorations in a room of his house, which he referred to as "the safari room," friends wrote in letters to the court. And it was there than his illegally obtained tiger-skin rug was to have pride of place.
But Buchan pointed to Varga's actions during the sting operation as proof of his intrinsic honesty. As he arrived to pay undercover agents the agreed upon $6,800 sum, he realized he was $50 short.
The agent, court records show, told him not to worry about it. But Varga returned moments after his illegal transaction to pay the extra $50 he owed.
"I've never heard of anyone who's committing a crime who realizes he's shorted his victim $50 and turns around and goes back to pay it," Buchan said.
Unconvinced, Winters, the prosecutor shot, back: "(He) also told the agents, 'You know what, use my sister's name on the receipt."
