New York ‘finch smuggling kingpin’ sentenced to a year and a day for conspiracy to smuggle songbirds out of Guyana

The man, who prosecutors are calling “one of New York City’s bigwigs smuggling finches,” got a year and a day behind bars for his latest bird-trafficking case.

Insaf Ali, 62, is not just a bird courier, he is the boss, federal prosecutors said, and he refused to change his lifestyle despite being captured at JFK in 2018 and having one of his henchmen arrested in 2021.

But the Bronx man claimed that his lifelong business of bird smuggling had nothing to do with money, but with his enduring love of finches, or towa towa, and the role they play in Guyanese culture.

One of Ali's couriers was arrested in April 2021 after smuggling the birds in curlers and hiding them in his socks.

“His need to have these specific birds to train, sing and keep company satisfies an emotional yearning and need,” wrote his lawyer Christine Delins in a January 26 letter to the court, citing Emily Dickinson and Maya Angelou. .

“This emotional connection with towa towa began when Insaf Ali was a young boy and stayed with him while he lived in America,” she wrote.

Ali’s lawyer showed Judge Margo Brody the 23-minute video during his sentencing in Brooklyn federal court on Thursday, hoping to convince her to show him leniency. In the video, Ali describes growing up in Guyana, and several New Yorkers talk about the importance of birdwatching in Guyanese culture.

“When I was about nine years old, my grandfather gave me a bird,” he says in the video, “and since then I started to love birds. And I walked on it before going to school in the morning. It’s like walking a dog.”

The video also shows footage of the so-called “bird racing” where two finches compete against each other, and the one who chirps 50 times wins the competition.

The winning bird could be sold to interested buyers for $10,000 apiece, according to federal prosecutors, though they are most commonly sold for $1,000 to $2,000 in the U.S., according to authorities.

Curlers stuffed with live finches after the courier was arrested in April 2021.

Prosecutors said his love of songbirds, which he sells to make a living, means he will continue to break the law and continue smuggling.

“The defendant is not a courier; he is the boss. He is notorious in his community as one of New York City’s finch-smuggling bigwigs, and by his own admission, he has been involved in the activity for decades,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Zuckerweisz wrote in a Jan. 31 statement.

He was arrested in December 2018 when he was caught at JFK airport with live finches hidden in curlers and stuffed into his socks, prosecutors said.

Despite the trial period, he continued to plan to ship more birds to the US, the feds said, and in April 2021 he asked a tailor to make a custom suit for one of his couriers in an unsuccessful attempt to get 35 birds through customs. Five birds did not survive the trip.

While court documents do not identify the courier, the photos included in prosecutors’ sentencing documents are the same photos released when 36-year-old Kevin Andre McKenzie was arrested in April 2021.

“This could have been a wake-up call for the defendant, but it is not,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Zuckerweisz wrote of the courier’s arrest in a January 31 statement. “On the contrary, in January 2022, the defendant was arrested at JFK airport with curlers in his luggage, ready to undertake another smuggling.”

Importers of wildlife require a permit to bring animals into the US, and commercial birds must be quarantined for 30 days to prevent the spread of the disease.

“Birdsinging competitions among the large Guyanese expat community in Queens, New York, have helped create an “unsustainable demand” for finches illegally sourced from Guyana. The birds are trapped near the brink of extinction,” Zuckerweisz wrote, referring to a report from TRAFFIC, a wildlife conservation group.

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