A Chinese man has admitted to smuggling around 850 protected turtles and other animals worth an estimated $1.4 million from the U.S. to Hong Kong, the Justice Department said.
The man, Wei Qiang Lin, “labeled the boxes as containing ‘plastic animal toys,’ among other things,” the DOJ said Monday in a statement. “Law enforcement intercepted the turtles during a border inspection and observed them bound and taped inside knotted socks within the shipping boxes,” it added.
“Lin also exported 11 other parcels filled with reptiles including venomous snakes,” the department said.
Lin pleaded guilty at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York “for falsely labeling live turtles as fake toys prior to exporting them in delivery boxes on a weeks-long journey to Hong Kong,” the DOJ said.
It added that he “primarily shipped eastern box turtles and three-toed box turtles, native U.S. species which feature colorful markings — a prized feature in the domestic and foreign pet market, particularly in China and Hong Kong.”
The creatures are also in high demand in Asian markets like mainland China and Thailand, where people consider turtles from other countries and continents as desirable exotic pets, according to the Association for Asian Studies.
Both are protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
The animals Lin smuggled from mid-2023 to late 2024 were valued at $1.4 million, the Department of Justice said.
Lin is facing a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine up to $250,000 or twice the gain or loss from the illegal activity when he is sentenced on Dec. 23, according to the DOJ.
“As part of his plea, Lin also agreed to abandon any property interest in the reptiles seized during the investigation,” the department said.
In a similar case in March, another Chinese national, Sai Keung Tin, also known as Ricky Tin, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for smuggling more than 2,100 eastern box turtles, the DOJ said at the time.
The animals were also hidden in socks and packed in boxes labeled as almonds and chocolate cookies. Authorities estimated at the time that each turtle could have been sold for $2,000, bringing the total value of the smuggled reptiles to $4.2 million.
