Feds pull wings off flytrap scheme.

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Flesh-eating plants. International conspiracy. An Agent Scully. This tale's got all the trappings for an episode of The X-Files. In November, Ted Minton, owner of C.I.P. Nursery Inc. in Surry County, pleaded guilty in Baltimore to trafficking in Venus' flytraps, carnivorous plants native to a only few coastal Carolina counties.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents, led by Agent Scully -- Julie, not Dana -- began unraveling the case back in 1996. Since 1994, Minton had been helping slip the plants out of the country to a Dutch nursery owner. "There's actually a big trade in flytraps all over the world," notes Marj Boyer, an N.C. Department of Agriculture botanist. Warren Hamel, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Minton, says endangered and protected wildlife is the world's second-largest black market, behind drugs but ahead of weapons. Though not an endangered plant, Venus' flytraps are protected by state law. It's illegal to remove them from the wild without the landowner's written consent, and exporting them requires...

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