Media release dated 20 October 2014.

Today the Snakeman Raymond Hoser was cleared of all criminal charges, vigorously pursued by the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE), (now called Department of Environment and Primary Industries, or DEPI).
Charges included extreme animal cruelty, public safety offences and other serious crimes.
The criminal charges were laid following an illegal armed raid on Hoser’s world-class reptile breeding facility on 17 August 2011 and the forced illegal closure of his successful wildlife education business, Snakebusters, Australia’s best reptiles at gunpoint on the same day and again in 2012.
Hoser’s wife and vulnerable young daughters were assaulted by heavily armed officers in the raid and permanently traumatised as a result.
The 11 man, 9 hour raid, included the killing of supposedly protected snakes used in public and educational displays and the malicious damage of property throughout the Hoser residence and wildlife breeding facility.
The business Snakebusters was shut down by the department in 2011 and again in 2012 in actions that were found by the full bench of the Court of Appeal on 5 September this year to be highly illegal.
With cumulative losses in the millions of dollars, Hoser now seeks costs, damages, restitution and compensation from the DEPI.
So far the DSE/DEPI have spent millions of dollars of taxpayer’s money in legal and other bills in their ruthless pursuit of Mr. Hoser and his business.
The “war” was sparked after Hoser publicly exposed a serious frauds by DSE employees in the lead up to and aftermath of the Black Saturday Bushfires in February 2009.
This involved the use of a captive-raised bottle-fed Koala as a Trojan horse to scam hundreds of thousands of dollars from well-meaning donors for wildlife rehabilitation that was to be used for home renovations.
This pet Koala was marketed as “Sam the Koala” in the tabloid media. It had been filmed drinking from a bottle in a fire-zone after the fires and then masqueraded as a bushfire victim. In fact the pet animal had been taken into the fire zone where the footage was made and then taken back to a DSE employee’s private home where it was a being kept as a pet.
Rather than risk surrendering their pet to Zoos Victoria for their own promotion, the DSE employee then swapped the drinking Koala for another (of different sex), which later died. It was stuffed and placed in the National Museum of Victoria. There it was fraudulently presented publicly as “Sam the Koala”, when in fact it wasn’t the drinking animal (a fact known to many staff there who were directed by management not to disclose the fact) (and also easily ascertained by viewing the footage of the drinking koala while comparing that animal to the stuffed one at the museum).
Hoser published the publicly available forensic evidence of the fraud in a journal (also posted online in Australasian Journal of Herpetology Issue 8), and was then charged with numerous criminal offenses by the DSE in retaliation for his public interest disclosures.
Last month the Court of Appeal found that those alleged offenses and others more recently alleged by the DSE against Hoser had no basis in fact or in law.
As a result a battery of serious criminal charges against Hoser were dropped in the magistrate’s court today.
The most serious claim against Hoser’s business Snakebusters was the false claim Hoser had put people’s lives at risk using Australia’s only surgically devenomized deadly snakes.
These snakes have had their venom glands removed in their entirety via a keyhole surgery method pioneered by Hoser himself.
To shatter a five-year old lie by the DSE that Hoser’s snakes had regenerated venom and were therefore a risk to people (something that is not even physically possible), Hoser, his staff and his children volunteered to take bites from the snakes in front of TV cameras and a public audience to prove they were safe.
In spite of having a written permit authorisation from the DSE to do this very act, the DSE later charged Hoser over these specially created bite videos claiming he’d stepped outside the law.
Video produced in court to shatter the lie of venom gland regeneration was leaked by DSE allies to media outlets who did a hatchet job on Hoser and his impeccable reputation as Australia’s leading snake expert.
It was even widely reported (without correction) that Hoser had accidentally killed his daughter and others when getting his devenomized snakes to bite them because they had (allegedly) regenerated venom, due the alleged fact that Hoser had no expertise with reptiles and was allegedly reckless.
While there was no stress to Hoser’s kids from the snakes and their non-venomous pin prick bites, they are now permanently scarred after being dragged out of bed and placed under house arrest by violent DSE officers and police on 17 August 2011. This very relevant fact was never reported in the media at the time!
The illegal actions by DSE to shut down Hoser’s business, Snakebusters in 2011 and 2012 effectively wiped out a leading environmental education enterprise built up over more than 2 decades and that had properly educated millions of people and clearly assisted in giving Australia the lowest long-term snake bite fatality rate in recorded history.
Since the closure of Snakebusters in 2011, backed by deliberate misinformation by DSE and their allies, Australia’s snakebite death rate has skyrocketed to record levels, including numerous snake handlers trained by inexperienced teachers instead of Hoser. As recently as last week a 41 year old snake handler died from a Brown Snake bite after believing DSE’s statements about Hoser’s devenomized snakes regenerating venom and Hoser surviving the bites only because he was lucky and received so-called “dry bites”.
A week earlier, Hoser had sought an order at VCAT for DSE to publicly renounce their false statements about Hoser’s snakes regenerating venom, false claims he lacked expertise and the associated false statement that dry bites from venomous snakes with venom are common.
Judge Lambrick, while accepting Hoser’s claims against DSE (DEPI) as being correct, did not make an order against the DEPI and they chose not to retract their false claims as published by themselves to a global audience.
Had the DSE/DEPI retracted their false statements, the 41 year old man who was bitten by the Brown snake and refused treatment on the basis he thought it was a “dry bite” may well have followed a different course of action and survived. Today Hoser said “Our ten staff were also subjected to illegal armed raids and assaults by DSE and police officers on numerous occasions. They have also suffered huge losses, both physically, financially and emotionally, as have my wife and young daughters.”
“No one in Australia deserves such treatment from government officers who are drunk on their power and operate outside the law”.
This is especially so for a group of ten Australians who have devoted their whole lives to wildlife conservation, animal welfare and public education”.
“At the time, these officers acted in contempt of the law as well as the Victorian Taxpayers, whom they milked of cash to wage their illegal war against us”.
“We will be ensuring that the DSE / DEPI fulfil their legal obligations arising from their criminal misconduct and to pay us costs, damages, restitution and compensation as already ordered by the Court of Appeal and arising from this.” Hoser also said “We bear no malice against the DSE / DEPI and would welcome their officers being a part of the solution to wildlife conservation matters, rather than being the major problem.”
Meanwhile as a result of DSE’s illegal closure of Snakebusters in 2011 and 2012, Hoser’s clients and potential clients had to engage inferior and unsafe displays. There have been numerous fatal and near fatal snakebites arising from these displays. However no one has been charged over these incidents.
Snakebusters is alone in the venomous snake display business to have an unmatched perfect safety record spanning more than 30 years.
The Snake Man Raymond Hoser is by any measurable criteria the world’s leading reptile expert. He has worked with venomous reptiles professionally for more than 30 years, authored nine major books, contributed to hundreds of others and published hundreds of major scientific papers. Hoser has also discovered and named hundreds of species, genera and families of snakes from around the world, which is more than any other person in history (full listing at the official ICZN website www.zoobank.org by doing a search for Hoser or simply click here for the listing). He has also discovered and named other species of wildlife including crocodiles, lizards and turtles, all backed with robust molecular evidence.
In a media release dated June 2012, posted at:
http://www.snakebusters.com.au/Snakebusters-win-TWO-court-cases-this-week.htm
In 2011, DSE had unlawfully retrospectively redefined a so-called snake pit, to allege Hoser’s was illegal, even though what Hoser had used for the previous 5 years was what the DSE themselves had directed Hoser to use, they also used themselves; as did others in the snake display business (none of whom were retrospectively charged like Hoser). The Supreme Court of Appeal found that the DSE’s charging and wrongful conviction of Hoser for related alleged offences was illegal and could not be used to support a claim Hoser was a serial law breaker. This was because Hoser had in fact complied with the letter of the law at all times.
Today Hoser said “Australian wildlife conservation has had a rare legal victory today. It was a huge victory for those who like our native animals and are opposed to government officers killing them for their own commercial benefit or as part of a campaign to cover-up their misconduct. One can only hope that DEPI take the message from the court and stop being the problem. They now have the opportunity to become part of the solution instead! Now the DEPI should publicly apologize and retract their numerous false statements that have already cost innocent people’s lives. They should start to work with me for wildlife conservation and not against me".
Hoser has also sought the DSE to publicly state that their claims against Hoser were false as by diverting people to less expert sources, lives were being put at risk through misinformation being given out both by the DSE and those to whom they were diverting business to.
Hoser also said “The DSE’s actions have cost taxpayers millions of dollars already. Now they should look after the interests of the taxpayers as well as the environment and pay their legal obligations of costs, damages, restitution and compensation without wasting everyone’s time and money by fighting our legal bills of costs and losses, that being a course of action that will cost taxpayers even more.”
The DSE has a history of recklessly costing Victorian taxpayers.
At VCAT proceedings in September 2008, DSE and the VCAT Judge ignored Hoser’s pleas to deal with the elevated risk of deaths from bushfires. Both DSE lawyers and the VCAT Judge (Deputy President Anne Coghlan) accused Hoser of being “delusional” when he said that “dozens of people may die when the next major bushfires hit Victoria”.
Six months later 173 Victorians died in the Black Saturday Bushfires of 7 February 2009. This year (2014) the DSE agreed to pay 103 million dollars to victims as partial compensation arising from their culpable and reckless actions. DSE were also unable to protect the safety of their own staff. In February last year two DSE officers, Katie Peters and Steven Kadar killed themselves when hooning around on duty and yet no managers in the department were held responsible or charged in relation to the obvious case of culpable workplace manslaughter. If such an incident happened in a private business the manager would be charged and the company shut down.

Further details:
Raymond Hoser, the snakeman. Phone (Australia) 0412-777-211
http://www.snakeman.com.au

Snake man cleared by Court of Appeal - he never put lives at risk!

The relevant Supreme Court of Appeal Judgement of 5 September 2014, as a pdf file is posted here

The relevant Supreme Court of Appeal Order of 5 September 2014, as a pdf file is posted here

Video Sam The Koala Scam exposed

Sam The Koala Scam exposed - Australasian Journal of herpetology Issue 8

The above media release is published here:
http://www.smuggled.com/snake-man-cleared-of-all-bogus-criminal-charges.htm

Snake man wins VCAT Case in 2015, after DSE illegally refuse to issue licenses against Hoser in 2014.

VCAT Decision in favour of Hoser dated 30 July 2015 as a pdf file is posted here

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