March 13, 2004, 4:43AM

Spring man faces indictment over orchid

Charges may bring 35 years in prison, $2 million in fines

By BILL MURPHY

Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

George Norris of Spring says he became fascinated with orchids decades ago.

His interest, he says, grew into an obsession and, to pay for his hobby, the 66-year-old retiree began selling orchids from his home.

But authorities say Norris ran afoul of the law while pursuing his side career. A federal grand jury in Miami this week indicted Norris and Manuel Arias Silva, a prominent orchid grower in Peru, on charges that they smuggled endangered orchids, including tropical lady slippers, into the United States.

Shipments cleared U.S. import inspections because Arias, working in concert with Norris, mislabeled endangered orchids plucked from the wild as common, nursery-grown varieties, the indictment says.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, signed by the United States, Peru and more than 150 other countries, makes it illegal to export certain orchids considered endangered.

While they are just flowers to most people, orchids are a passion to true aficionados. And the truly passionate have shown a willingness to smuggle in much-sought-after varieties, creating a substantial black market, said Harold Koopowitz, an ecologist at the University of California at Irvine and author of books on orchids.

On the black market, a current hard-to-get Peruvian species, Phragmipedium kovachii , has been selling for $1,000 a plant in Holland, he said. Norris is not accused of selling this species.

In The Orchid Thief, author Susan Orlean writes that orchids were frequently smuggled in South America, especially by those seeking new or endangered varieties.

Some get bitten by the orchid bug in a different way. Collectors have traveled to distant lands, hoping to discover a new species and perhaps have it named after himself or herself.

Norris, who runs Spring Orchid Specialities out of a greenhouse behind his house, blames the international treaty and overregulation of the orchid industry for turning hobbyists into accused criminals.

"Selling these flowers doesn't diminish their number in the wild at all," said Norris, a retired salesman. "It's not like we are constructing pipe bombs or selling pedophile material. We're talking flowers."

He says he received the plants legally, but he never would have been indicted if those who developed the endangered species list had not wrongly put some orchids, including those he imported, on that list. Most of his imported orchids, he says, should not have been categorized as endangered.

"I have seen whole hillsides in Peru absolutely covered with them," he said.

All Phragmipedium orchids, known as "phrags" and tropical lady slippers, found in the wild are considered endangered and cannot be exported, according to the international treaty.

Phrags can be exported and imported to the United States only if they were grown in tubes or a greenhouse, a country such as Peru issues an export permit and the U.S. issues an import permit.

Some of the orchids illegally shipped by Arias were collected in the wild, and the shipments did not include the proper permits, the U.S. Attorney's office says.

Norris faces a seven-count indictment charging him with conspiracy, illegally importing and selling endangered and protected species and making false statements to a federal investigator. He faces up to 35 years in prison and fines of $1.75 million. Arias faces six smuggling-related counts.

The indictment charges Arias and Norris with conspiring to smuggle in the orchids from 1999 to October 2003, though the pair had made deals dating as far back as the mid-1990s.

During a search of Norris' home in October, U.S. Fish and Wildlife investigators took his computer, letters, records and other items.

In letters, Norris advised Arias not to ship through Houston, but to send items through Miami, where he said inspections were more lax.

"This shipment was great," Norris wrote to Arias in 1998. "It went through inspection in 1 1/2 hours. They did not open very many bags. They know that you can have really clean plants and just do not look. But this is only Miami ... Houston would be much tougher. Please make a note to not ship except to Miami. I do not think there will be any problem with the phrags."

In another letter, he advised Norris to mislabel the phrags as another type of orchid that wasn't illegal to ship.

"I don't see any problems with shipping phrags, as Miami is so overloaded with plant shipments that they rarely open boxes and do not look at many plants. Make sure they are wrapped with moss and paper and in plastic and marked Maxillarias as before," he wrote.

Arias would later send a code that set out the real identities of mislabeled plants, the U.S. Attorney's office said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began investigating him after an orchid lover contacted it to say Norris was advertising Peruvian orchids on a Web site.

At the behest of Fish and Wildlife, the orchid client made several buys from Norris. The client asked Norris to provide him with copies of permits indicating that the plants had come to the country legally. But Norris never provided the copies, the indictment says.

Norris said the orchids weren't plucked in the wild, but grown in a greenhouse or tube and Arias received export permits for them.

He said he is annoyed that authorities are treating the case like he's dealing drugs and making scads of money.

The plants are sold for $20 or $25 each, and he makes about $11,000 a year, he said.

Koopowitz, the UCal professor, said the black market for orchids won't go away.

Smuggling could be curtailed if countries changed regulations and allowed sought-after orchids to be propagated in greenhouses or tubes and sold, he said.

"The regulation is out of hand,"he said.