(CN) - A California man will spend the next year in prison for selling black rhinoceros horns to an undercover U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent, the Justice Department said Wednesday.
Authorities arrested Lumsden Quan, 47, of San Francisco, in 2014 as part of "Operation Crash," a nationwide crackdown on the illegal trafficking of rhinoceros horns.
Quan pleaded guilty, admitting that he worked with co-defendant Edward Levine to transport two horns from California to Nevada and selling them to the undercover agent for $55,000.
Levine is scheduled to go to trial this coming March.
Quan will spend a year and two days in prison for conspiracy to violate the Lacey and Endangered Species Acts and for violating the Lacey Act with the sale of the rhino horns.
The Justice Department said Operation Crash - "crash" is the term for a herd of rhinos - remains ongoing, and has so far resulted in 22 convictions and forfeiture and restitution amounts totaling $5.5 million.
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