Cougars, bears, sloths, & a kangaroo, oh my, & a rap sheet as long as a python
MARGATE, Florida; BROOKHAVEN, New York––Sloth, a harmless herbivorous “species of least concern,” according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, frequently exhibited but rarely surviving long in captivity, also happens to be the name of one of the Seven Deadly Sins, also allegedly often exhibited by some of the same individuals.
The other Deadly Sins are Greed, Lust, Envy, Glutton, Wrath, and Pride, a term also encountered in the phrase “pride of lions.”
In the roadside zoo racket, that tends to mean a breeding mill producing lion cubs for handling and show.
Among the reputed deadliest sinners in the roadside zoo racket lately, since “Joe Exotic” Schreibvogel-Maldonado was packed off to prison in 2020 for soliciting the murder of critic and Big Cat Rescue founder Carole Baskin, is one Larry Wallach, 67.
“Bizarre roadside encounter”
Wallach has never been busted for killing or trying to kill humans, but has been busted more often than a glass sledgehammer for alleged offenses often resulting in the deaths of animals, especially sloths.
“Wallach’s long record of animal abuse and misconduct includes roughly 60 animal welfare violations, a guilty plea for trafficking dangerous animals, lying to federal inspectors, being held in contempt of court and having his [former] Long Island operation shut down by a state judge, according to enforcement records and court filings,” summarized Brandon Cruz for Yahoo.com on February 1, 2026.
Wallach had then just been “busted in a bizarre roadside encounter on Long Island— toting two sloths and a kangaroo in his car,” Cruz wrote.
Sloth Encounters
Wallach, “whose exotic animal exhibition business is called Sloth Encounters, was issued a summons for violating Oyster Bay’s dangerous animals ordinance after federal, state and local authorities discovered the illicit animals in his black Honda Odyssey outside a coffee shop,” Cruz continued.
“Town code enforcement officers were joined by state and federal agencies,” Cruz said, “responding to a tip that Wallach — a repeat violator with a long trail of animal welfare citations who fled Long Island to Florida — was back in the area and once again moving exotic animals through Nassau County despite being barred from doing so.
“It is illegal,” Cruz explained, “to transport such exotic animals over state lines into New York, where it also is illegal to own them in most places, including Long Island’s Suffolk County and most of Nassau County such as Oyster Bay.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
“USDA license cancelled, yet continues to exhibit”
Complained Humane Long Island executive director John Di Leonardo to the New York Post, “Wallach’s USDA license was canceled, yet he continues to unlawfully exhibit wild animals.”
Struggling for more than a decade to bring Wallach to justice, Di Leonardo flew to Florida on June 3, 2026 to join Margate residents in lobbying, apparently successfully, against Wallach’s attempt to open a roadside sloth exhibition site in a strip mall alongside North State Road #7.
Posted Ana Maria Campos, Facebook page administrator for South Florida Vegans, on June 4, 2026, “Larry Wallach has no USDA license, no signed lease in Margate, and no animal display permits as required by city code.
“Yet somehow sloths, kangaroos, and other animals kept showing up around town. The city has now prohibited him from bringing animals onto city property.
“We have a feeling this won’t be the last update.”
Wants to open sloth site after Florida suspended sloth imports
A day earlier, reported Sofia Saric for the Miami Herald, “About a dozen animal advocates gathered outside Margate City Hall before a commission meeting to speak out against Larry Wallach and his business plan while holding signs reading ’56 Dead Sloths for Orlando’s Sloth World,'” an unrelated fiasco about which ANIMALS 24-7 reported extensively in Ex-West Coast Game Park Safari operator Brian Tenney cops a plea, “and ‘No to Larry Wallach’s Wildlife Adventures.’”
Mentioned Saric, after summarizing the Sloth World disaster, “The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission on May 13, 2026 suspended most sloth imports to the state for 60 days after the saga made national headlines.”
Wallach, alleged Margate resident Ron Roberts to Saric, “dupes people into believing he cares about [animals], so he can continue using them to support himself financially. One of the people he has duped is a Margate city commissioner.”
As if on cue, Margate city commissioner Tommy Ruzzano arrived bearing both a giant sloth stuffed toy and a mini sloth stuffed toy.
Di Leonardo flew to Florida with warning
“Ruzzano went back-and-forth with several of the activists,” wrote Saric, “including John Di Leonardo of Humane Long Island,” who flew in “hours earlier from New York for the sole purpose of warning commissioners and the public about the accusations of Wallach’s animal mistreatment, he said.”
The New York Post, Saric recalled, “has repeatedly reported about Wallach, from him being cited for allegedly keeping a sloth and wallaby in unsafe conditions to allegedly bringing a sloth to a Brooklyn tattoo parlor without a permit.”
Details the Humane Long Island web site, “Larry Wallach has been cited for more than sixty violations of the [federal] Animal Welfare Act, including ‘critical’ violations related to lying to federal inspectors about the bite of a child and after an investigation revealed staff hitting sloths and Wallach roughly grabbing a wounded sloth by his head and neck.
“In 2023,” the Humane Long Island web site continues, “Wallach pleaded guilty to unlawfully trafficking dangerous Nile monitors and was found in civil contempt of court.
“In 2024, Wallach was charged with criminal contempt and his unlawfully operated Hauppauge [Long Island] facility was shuttered by the [New York state] Supreme Court.
“The USDA canceled Wallach’s license to exhibit animals the same year, but he has since fled to Florida where he is continuing to exhibit unlawfully,” the Humane Long Island web site concludes.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Wealthy New Yorker”
The earliest record of Larry Wallach known to ANIMALS 24-7 is a 1967 photograph he posted to Facebook on December 3, 2025, showing him with his parents in front of the William and Frances Wallach Medical Center in Tel Aviv, Israel, which they apparently endowed.
The NewspaperArchive record on Larry Wallach begins on October 11, 1991, when the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune identifies him as a “wealthy New Yorker” whose “family runs a New York insurance business,” who “has a pet cougar named Mugsy at his home in East Rockaway, New York.”
Wallach made news on that occasion for buying a $1 million insurance policy to enable one Richard Sowers of Stillwater, Minnesota, to keep his pet cougar.
(Facebook photo)
Sells speed boats in Florida
Whether by coincidence or otherwise, a Columbia University-educated pianist and harpsichordist named Larry Wallach, long living in western Massachusetts, was prominent at the time and for many years afterward, while a Richard Sowers retired in 2024 after 35 years as music director for the Anderson Symphony Orchestra in Anderson, Indiana.
Neither musician is known to have been involved with exotic animals.
But Larry Wallach the exotic animal keeper is known to have sold speed boats in Florida, where speed boats kill an estimated average of about 100 endangered manatees per year.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Larry can be replaced, but Mugsy may be shot”
Larry Wallach the exotic animal keeper made news again in May 1993, when American SPCA exotic animal director Kathi Travers told Boston Globe reporter Vicki Croke that Mugsy had bitten Wallach at least six times and was “An accident waiting to happen.
“I fear getting that phone call that something has happened,” Travers said. “Larry can be replaced, but I’m worried Mugsy will be shot.”
(See Kathi Travers, 69, vehemently non-“animal rights” animal advocate.)
Somewhat surprisingly, Wallach next turned up in July 1996 as “special investigator for wildlife” at the Nassau County SPCA, helping to impound 140 chickens held by a man named Roderick Baker.
“We showed up, and the guy went a little bit psycho. Took out a large knife and started cutting off the heads of chickens,” Wallach told Monty Phan of Newsday. “We told him to stop. Then the sergeant came and arrested him.”
The surviving chickens, Wallach said, were taken to a farm on Long Island to “live a normal chicken life.”
Vanishing Species Wildlife Inc.
Also while with the Nassau County SPCA, Wallach was in October 2003 called to assist with impounding a 425-pound tiger and an alligator, who were found in an apartment in the Drew Hamilton public housing block in Manhattan.
The tiger and alligator were discovered when owner Antoine Yates, then 31, fled to the University of Pennsylvania hospital in Philadelphia with leg injuries he claimed were inflicted by a pit bull.
Seven years after that episode, “following repeated violations of animal welfare regulations,” reported David Fleshler on August 23, 2010 for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the USDA revoked the license of a Davie, Florida company called Vanishing Species Wildlife Inc., owned by Barbara Hartman-Harrod and Jeffrey Harrod,
Vanishing Species Wildlife Inc. “exhibited baby tigers, cougars and other wildlife at fairs, schools and summer camps,” Fleshler wrote. “The Harrods had been ordered to remove the caged animals by July 31, 2009.”
When Fleshler tried to call Hartman-Harrod and the attorney representing Vanishing Species Wildlife Inc., Wallach returned the call, identifying himself as having been “involved in wildlife transactions with Vanishing Species,” Fleshler said.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Frail & malnourished wallaby”
Back on Long Island, reported N.J. Burkett for WABC television news on January 31, 2017, Larry Wallach was apparently long departed from any association with the Nassau County SPCA when the agency found “a frail and malnourished wallaby” locked in an East Rockaway garage.
“There is not adequate heat in there, there’s no food or water , and there are feces all over,” Nassau County SPCA detective Gary Rogers said.
“We are in contact with the district attorney’s office about possible charges,” Rogers added.
Continued Burkett, “Authorities said the home is owned by Larry Wallach, a self-described expert on exotic animals. Rogers said a ball python was also located inside the home, but local ordinances do not preclude that kind of pet.”
Zoo was a dump
Larry Wallach meanwhile was long involved in various roles with the Harold H. Malkmes Holtsville Wildlife & Ecology Center Zoo in central Long Island.
Wallach was even for a time the zoo director, according to the Humane Long Island website.
Described by Humane Long Island as an “unaccredited municipal roadside zoo run by the Town of Brookhaven Highway Department,” founded in 1979 “on the site of an uncapped landfill,” this facility was, according to Wikipedia, named after a former Brookhaven highway department supervisor.
The site, Wikipedia says, “was once a general dump owned by New York state, acquired by the Town of Brookhaven in 1937 for use as a town dump.
“Prior to this,” recounts Wikipedia, “the right of way for the Suffolk Traction Company trolley line also ran through this location,
“In 1968, the State Environmental Facilities Corporation converted the site into a sanitary landfill with seepage lagoons, and closed the facility completely by 1974.
“By 1971,” recalled Wikipedia, “the park,” which became the zoo, “was already under development.”
Honey the bear’s plight went from bad to worse
The longtime star attraction at the Holtsville Zoo, as it was usually called for short, was a black bear named Honey.
“Honey, along with her brother Pooh, was donated to the center as a cub in the late 1990s by wildlife exhibitor Larry Wallach, who was forced to shut down his sloth encounter storefront,” reported Kathianne Boniello and Georgia Worrell for the New York Post.
Wallach’s “exotic animal store Sloth Encounters,” Boniello and Worrell said, was “shuttered after ‘Long Island’s Joe Exotic’ was accused of abuse.”
Honey was euthanized at age 27 on November 22, 2024, “after what animal advocates allege was years of horrific neglect and lack of medical care at the taxpayer-funded facility,” wrote Boniello and Worrell.
Before losing mobility and being euthanized due to a stroke, detailed Boniello and Worrell, “The doomed beast suffered from broken and rotted teeth, and chronic urinary tract infections.”
The Harold H. Malkmes Holtsville Wildlife & Ecology Center Zoo was closed, reported Linda Leuzzi and Connor Patton for the Suffolk County News on April 23, 2026, “after 46 years in operation.”
The resident animals were transferred to a variety of other facilities.
(Larry Wallach Facebook photo)
A Kodiak moment
Honey and Pooh were not the only bears associated with Wallach.
On February 5, 2024, Tanner Stewart reported for WEAR television news in Pensacola, Florida, the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission hit “53-year-old Shae Hensley of Baker” with eleven criminal counts, including “unlawfully importing two Kodiak bears, resulting in escape without obtaining a valid import permit required by law, failing to report the escape immediately after discovering they were missing,” and “unlawfully obtaining the species without proper enclosure.”
Hensley told the investigating Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission officers that “he was training the bears for their rightful owner — a man from New York named Larry Wallach,” Stewart paraphrased.
“Long history of Animal Welfare Act violations”
“Wallach is a known figure in New York’s exotic animal trade,” Stewart continued.
“According to the Humane Society of the United States [now called Humane World for Animals], he has a “long history of federal Animal Welfare Act violations.
“Just over a month ago,” Stewart narrated, “the Humane Society of the U.S. released their report of a shocking undercover investigation revealing physical abuse and poor conditions of sloths held by Wallach. Wallach denies any involvement in the case.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“While Wallach isn’t currently facing any charges in the Kodiak cubs case,” Stewart added, “the Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission says he holds no valid license or permit to transport or own bears in Florida.
“As for the two cubs, they were sent to ZooWorld in Panama City Beach.”
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I was eduated to believe we are supposed to evolve, not backslide into the primordial swamp.
Clearly, some have not gotten that message.
Sharing with gratitude to you and disgust, repulsion, and a whole lot more, for anyone lacking in compassion, caring, and personal responsibility.
If it fits, wear it.
Since this blatantly disreputable individual, Mr. Wallach, is so well known in circles both worthy and criminal, stil, despite his many convictions, appears to be ‘at large’ and doing similar abhorrently and contemptible activities, one wonders….how and why…is this the case!
Is the law now so weak and disrespected in this country that such a person is still walking about free? It’s all beyond my comprehension! How low are we fallen !
Sloths have been so negatively affected by their boom in pop culture visibility. They have gone from an animal curiosity many people wouldn’t even recognize, to festooning every imaginable toy, knickknack, and media property.
In some cases, this has led to sloth protection efforts being better-funded, but it’s also led to a lot of misery for these animals. Their sedate natures and small size allow them to be exploited as roadside zoo and photo props. Sloth “petting” may be replacing cub “petting” to some degree.