‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic files $94M suit from Fort Worth prison, in COVID-19 quarantine
Joe Maldonado-Passage, more commonly known as Joe Exotic, filed a lawsuit this month from the Fort Worth prison where he is being held.
Maldonado-Passage is the focus of the Netflix documentary series “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness,” which has exploded in popularity since its March 20 release. The 57-year-old former zoo owner is being held at the Fort Worth Federal Medical Center, according to inmate records.
Three days before the series was released, Maldonado-Passage filed a suit in Oklahoma City federal court on claims of false imprisonment, false arrest, discrimination, perjury and entrapment. He is asking for $93,840,000 in relief.
Maldonado-Passage’s husband, Dillon Passage, said he is in COVID-19 quarantine at the Fort Worth prison because the previous prison he was at reported coronavirus cases, according to an interview Passage did with Variety Live.
Defendants in Maldonado-Passage’s lawsuit include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Department of the Interior, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted him and several witnesses in the case, including Jeffrey Lowe, who appears in the series.
The mullet-haired Maldonado-Passage claims in his lawsuit that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service placed tigers on the exotic species list not to protect them, but to target people who use tigers in commercial businesses.
He also says he is being discriminated against because he “is an openly gay male with the largest collection of generic tigers and cross breeds.”
In April 2019, Maldonado-Passage was found guilty of trying to hire someone to murder Carole Baskin, a prominent animal rights activist, according to NBC News.
He was convicted and sentenced to 22 years in prison on two counts of murder-for-hire, eight counts of violating the Lacey Act for falsifying wildlife records and nine counts of violating the Endangered Species Act.
The Netflix series centers on Maldonado-Passage’s zoo in Oklahoma, where he owned hundreds of exotic animals including — you guessed it — at least 200 tigers.
This story was originally published March 31, 2020 at 6:44 PM with the headline "‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic files $94M suit from Fort Worth prison, in COVID-19 quarantine."
