Valley Center

Three Valley Center residents pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges of participating in a ring that smuggled more than 300 exotic parrots worth an estimated $250,000 into the United States.

Prosecutors allege that the trio was part of an operation that smuggled yellow-naped Amazon parrots, highly valued as domestic pets because of their intelligence and ability to quickly learn how to mimic human sounds, into the country from Mexico between 1985 and 1987.

Many of the parrots, protected under an international treaty that makes it illegal to sell the birds in the United States, allegedly were shipped to Louisiana and South Carolina, where authorities found some infected with a deadly disease.

Eugene Marcel Carrier, 37, pleaded guilty to felony charges that included conspiracy and the transportation, sale and purchase of prohibited wildlife; Lynne Mooney, 25, pleaded guilty to conspiring to receive, transport and conceal smuggled merchandise, and the transport, sale and purchase of prohibited wildlife; and Robert Wylde, 62, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of transporting protected wildlife.

The three, now free on bond, are scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Judith Keep on Oct. 5. The felony counts carry maximum sentences of five years in prison and $250,000 fines.

Prosecutors alleged that the three defendants bought the birds in Mexico, smuggled them across the border in the side panels of vehicles and kept them in a San Diego house before moving them to the commercial bird distribution center that Carrier and Mooney operate at a Valley Center ranch.