OnlyFans model gets very light sentence for selling jaguar cub to man she met online
Trisha Denise Meyer, 43, of Houston, was sentenced Monday to six months' probation after pleading guilty to selling the cub, then named Amador, for $26,000 and illegally shipping it from Texas to California in 2021.
She faced up to eight years in prison and a $700,000 fine, but prosecutors accepted a plea deal in which she copped to just one count and was ordered to pay $30,000 in restitution.
The jaguar was bought by Abdul 'Mannie' Rahman, a marijuana dealer in Murrieta, California, who renamed it Hades and kept it in his five-bedroom home before reselling it to another man living with a pregnant partner.
Concerned about having a jaguar around a newborn, the second buyer eventually dumped the cub - malnourished, covered in feces, and missing clumps of fur - at a wildlife sanctuary near San Diego.
Now renamed Eddie, the cub lives safely at Lions Tigers & Bears sanctuary in Alpine, California.
In one 2021 video, Meyer posted a clip Amador licking at the air while lying on her lap. 'thankful to be his momma #catmom,' she wrote. She even posed with the cub between her exposed breasts on OnlyFans.
Rahman, who attended one of Meyer's $1,000-an-hour hotel meetups in Austin, told the Los Angeles Times: 'All I knew was the jaguar was cute, and I had the money, and I wanted it.'
'When I'm getting offered to buy a wild animal, and it's so cute when you see it, when it's small, who the f*** is gonna say no? No one will.'
After Rahman posted photos of the cub online, Meyer allegedly texted him: 'If I got word of it here. That means others are seeing that & will snitch and they will be trying to track him down.'
Eventually, social media clips of the cub caught the attention of sanctuary founder Bobbi Brink.
'All we knew at that point was that there was a jaguar in Riverside,' said California Fish and Wildlife warden Austin Smith.
Federal law prohibits transporting endangered species across state lines - and California bans jaguar ownership outright.
Brink said when the cub was dropped off in a dog crate. 'He was shaking and urinating in fear.'
The staff named him Eddie after the construction worker who found him.
Experts confirmed the jaguar's identity using influencer videos. 'It's pretty horrific to see that and to know that that happens,' said Mathias Tobler of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
'People treating him like a little pet cat and passing him around for entertainment.'
Lead investigator Ed Newcomer of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added: 'They are not animal lovers.'
'They are either in it for the money or they're in it for the obsession of collecting and owning and having and controlling.'
Newcomer eventually traced the seller to Meyer. 'Instantly he said, 'That's Trish Meyer. We have been after her for years. She is notorious,' he recalled.
A federal grand jury indicted Meyer in October 2022. She turned herself in after more than a month on the run.
Rahman was also charged and sentenced in July 2023 to a year of probation and ordered to pay $30,000 in restitution.
Meyer, who dubbed herself the 'Texas Zookeeper,' was no stranger to law enforcement.
In 2016, she was arrested in Nevada with three tigers roaming the backyard. She was charged with child endangerment after a game warden saw her 14-year-old daughter petting tiger cubs, but the charge was later dropped.
'My child was never in danger, none of my four children have ever been in danger,' Meyer told a reporter after pleading guilty to a related theft charge involving a Savannah kitten.
'Nobody's been hurt by our animals.' She called her kids 'young zookeepers,' and said teachers referred to her as the 'tiger mom.'
Despite a ban on selling exotic animals, Meyer continued. In one case, she was accused of selling a diseased kitten that died of emaciation.
In another, she allegedly sold a wild Geoffroy's cat disguised as a Bengal, which attacked the buyer.
Despite her past, Meyer remains active on Instagram under the name @mimisexoticworld, where she now posts photos with a white tiger, lemur, and exotic birds. Her bio reads: 'I no longer sell animals.'
Eddie, now weighing 118 pounds, lives in an enclosure with grass, climbing platforms, and a pool - next to a retired movie bear and a lion once used in entertainment.
'It's their forever home,' said sanctuary keeper John Schorman. 'It's a privilege watching all the animals thrive.'
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