A Brasília animal trafficking ring to rival Netflix’s Tiger King

A worldwide hit during Covid-19 isolation, Netflix series Tiger King is a bizarre and immersive depiction of the world of exotic animal enthusiasts in the U.S. The eponymous big cat monarch at the center of the show is Joe Exotic, the eccentric 50-something zoo owner with a love for all things feline. Behind the dramatic — and often ludicrous — twists and turns of the seven-part series, light is cast on the shady illegal market of buying and selling exotic animals. And in Brazil, soon after the Tiger King zeitgeist faded, news of a man being bitten by a cobra in capital city Brasília ended up shedding light on an animal trafficking ring worthy of its own television series.

The story began on July 7, when 22-year-old vet student Pedro Lehmkul was bitten by a venomous monocled cobra. The following day, the snake was found inside a box outside a shopping mall in the Lago Sul region of Brasília, 14 kilometers from Mr. Lehmkul’s home. Since then, by way of investigations and anonymous tip-offs, police in the capital have found a series of wild animals being kept in apartments, houses, and ranches of people linked to Mr. Lehmkul, who was left in a coma after the cobra bite and left hospital last week, seeing his role switch from victim to prime suspect.

The investigation began as soon as the Civil Police was informed that a young man had been treated in a Brasilia hospital for a cobra bite. As the species in question is highly venomous and not endemic to Brazil — being native to Asia and Africa — law enforcement suspected there could be more to the story than first thought. Detectives visited Mr. Lehmkul’s apartment, finding objects indicating that other serpents were being bred illegally. The following day, after an anonymous tip-off, Environmental Police officers rescued 10 exotic snakes — all originating from other...