Westmoreland County man charged with paying people overseas to torture monkeys

MOUNT PLEASANT, Pa. — A Mount Pleasant man is charged with paying people overseas to torture monkeys.

According to the complaint, filed in federal court, Joseph Garrett Buckland was part of an online group involved with distributing, watching and discussing videos depicting “animal crushing.”

“The term ‘animal crushing’ meant actual conduct in which one or more living non-human mammals were purposely crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated, impaled or otherwise subjected to serious bodily injury,” the complaint says.

Prosecutors allege Buckland belonged to the group from March 2023 to May 2025.

Group members would pay people in Indonesia with instructions to create “animal crushing” videos, prosecutors say. The “videographer” would then obtain and torture a monkey, and the resulting video would be distributed online.

Reportedly, Buckland and three co-conspirators, who lived outside Pennsylvania, conspired to create and distribute such videos.

The complaint lists 14 different occasions where Buckland allegedly commissioned the creation of “animal crushing” videos, and three instances of allegedly distributing them. One video is noted to last nearly an hour and a half.

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