Oxnard, California – Jose Manuel Perez is a familiar face to officials at the border posts. Time and again, he’s been stopped by authorities when trying to enter, and time and again they’ve found something. Now the prosecution has released the massive penalty for the "lizard man."

On its Facebook profile, the California District Attorney’s Office posted a brief report on Perez a few days ago.

The 34‑year‑old was sentenced to 65 additional months behind bars.

The reason for this unusually long prison term is Perez’s conduct over the past six years, during which he allegedly smuggled more than 1,700 reptiles into the US.

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The estimated value of the small creatures is about $739,000.

In court, the man pleaded guilty to two incidents from August 2022.

He had already been caught several times before, for example in February 2022 when authorities stopped him with 60 reptiles on his person.

At the time, per People, he tried to convince officials that the animals were merely his pets.

Together with his accomplices, Perez used social media to promote and sell the illegal animals. The gang didn’t shy away from showing how the creatures were captured in the wild.

During a search of luggage that was being shipped from Hong Kong to the US, authorities found specimens of the Yucatán box turtle, Mexican box turtle, baby crocodiles, and Mexican spiny-tailed iguana.

But an overly drastic change won’t be this prison sentence for Perez, because he’s already in jail.

He was already sentenced to nine years in prison for illegal weapons possession back in May 2023, before his animal‑smuggling scheme was even exposed.