Boom! The case against Lumber Liquidators ("Tiger Liquidators," September/October 2015) has ended with a federal court fining the giant hardwood-flooring retailer more than $13 million and sentencing it to five years of organizational probation. The company was charged with violating the Lacey Act, which makes it a crime to import illegally sourced lumber into the United States. In this case, Lumber Liquidators illegally imported timber from the Russian Far East, the last refuge of the Siberian tiger. 

“This company left a trail of corrupt transactions and habitat destruction," said Assistant Attorney General John C. Cruden for the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. "Now they will pay a price for this callous and careless pursuit of profit.”

Helping to bring Lumber Liquidators' deception to light was an international nonprofit called the Environmental Investigation Agency. Sierra's story described how EIA director Alexander von Bismarck and other staffers, posing as wood buyers, visited a Chinese company named Xingjia that was importing illegally cut Mongolian oak from Russia and selling it to Lumber Liquidators. (According to federal prosecutors, in 2013 Lumber Liquidators imported Mongolian oak but declared it as Welsh oak.) Sierra's Jake Abrahamson described the scene:

A company vehicle picked them up and drove them around town, showing off the company’s private rail spur, where it received wood from Russia. At a restaurant, they were introduced to high officials from the local military, the customs department, and the courts, whom Xingjia had on hand to flaunt its immunity from Chinese law enforcement.

The diners sipped on Chinese liquor while discussing their blooming partnership. Throughout the meal, the Xingjia representative described his illegal sourcing practices with little provocation. “Their relationship had been going on with Lumber Liquidators for at least five years and was their single most important relationship, according to what they told us,” said von Bismarck. 

“By knowingly and illegally sourcing timber from vulnerable forests in Asia and other parts of the world, Lumber Liquidators made American consumers unwittingly complicit in the ongoing destruction of some of the world's last remaining intact forests,” said Director Dan Ashe of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The forests of the Russian Far East are the last refuge of the Siberian tiger, of which only 450 remain in the wild. The acorns of the Mongolian oaks are an essential food source for red deer and wild boar, the tigers' main prey. The mechanism of extinction is simple: No oaks, no acorns, no tigers. 

Lumber Liquidators' $13.15 million penalty is the largest criminal fine ever under the Lacey Act. Under the terms of its probation, the company agreed to mandatory implementation of a government-approved environmental compliance plan and a series of independent audits. A portion of the fine will go to preservation of the Siberian tiger. Another will help fund the development of a device to identify the species of wood samples at the U.S. border, which could help end criminal deception of the sort practiced by Lumber Liquidators.