The three were arrested in Christchurch last month and one pleaded guilty immediately, while the other two entered guilty pleas today after several weeks on bail when they were remanded to stay at a central city hotel.
The pair who pleaded guilty today have been told that prison is virtually inevitable but reports have been ordered on their ability to pay substantial fines when they are sentenced on March 29.
Thomas Benjamin Price, 31, of Gallen, Switzerland and described as both a stockbroker and unemployed, was said in court to be the "prime mover" in the venture.
Gustavo Eduardo Toledo-Albarran, a 28-year-old chef, from Carranza, Mexico, was the hunter who gathered 16 jewelled geckos from the Otago Peninsula.
Manfred Walter Bachmann, a 55-year-old engineer from Kampala, Uganda, was said to be naïve and a middle-man, but that view was not accepted by his sentencing judge.
Bachmann was handed the geckos by Price, when the animals had been packed into plastic tubes. He was meant to pass the package on to a fourth person who would have taken them out of the country. The fourth person has never been caught.
The 15-week jail term imposed on Bachmann by Judge Jane Farish in the Christchurch District Court today was one week longer than the sentence for another German national, Hans Kurt Kubus, who was caught at Christchurch International Airport with 44 geckos and skinks in December. Kubus was also fined $5000.
More details emerged today about the latest Department of Conservation interception in which the department says it was "acting on information received".
Prosecutor Mike Bodie said Price and Toledo-Albarran had arrived in New Zealand on February 5, rented a vehicle and drove to Dunedin where they planned to collect wildlife from Otago Peninsula for illegal export.
Over five days, Toledo-Albarran searched vegetation for the 16 animals which were later placed into plastic tubing sealed with cotton wool and tape, and with breathing apertures.
They drove back to Christchurch on February 12. Price met Bachmann and handed him the package of tubes and the men were arrested soon after.
The department says there were 13 adult geckos and three immature animals. Eleven of the animals were female and nine were pregnant and were expected to give birth to one or two young in the next few weeks.
The animals had a total value of $192,000 on the European market.
Price admitted a charge of possessing the geckos, and Toledo-Albarran admitted illegally hunting them.
Counsel for Bachmann, Glenn Henderson, described his client as "a courier - a bit of a dupe in the middle".
But Mr Bodie said: "It is hard to reconcile the enormous amount of international travel he has done in the last 10 months."
Judge Farish said: "I don't buy into what he's said about being naïve or being a dupe. This was clearly premeditated offending. Given his age and his travelling, he's not that naïve."
The department had bank records showing deposits of $750 into Bachmann's account two days before his travel to New Zealand, and a later deposit from Switzerland of $1024.
He was found with $1200 in cash, but the judge said she was unable to order its forfeiture under the Proceeds of Crime legislation without more detail, and she declined to order that it be put towards covering the cost of prosecution.
Mr Bodie later told Judge David Saunders the department was concerned about the risk of Price leaving the country if granted bail because it believed he had access to another passport.
Defence counsel Simon Graham applied for bail for the pair but it was refused by Judge Saunders who said prison sentences were likely given other recent jail terms handed down "to people who hunt our wildlife for commercial gain".
