Who is Joe Exotic?

Joseph Maldonado-Passage, better known as Joe Exotic, ran a tiger petting zoo and was sentenced to 22 years in prison for trying to hire a hitman to kill an animal-rights activist who had criticised his zoo’s treatment of animals and for killing five tiger cubs.

Maldonado-Passage was convicted in April last year 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 United States Attorney’s Office for the Western according to a statement by the District of Oklahoma, as per The New York Times.

Tiger King: everything we know about Netflix’s new true-crime series