Smuggler Who Hid 51 Turtles in Pants Sentenced to 57 Months

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ANN ARBOR, MI – The notorious international turtle smuggler who stuffed more than 50 turtles in his pants in an attempt to sneak them across the U.S.-Canada border in 2014 — and shipped thousands more to China — received a nearly five-year prison sentence in federal court in Ann Arbor Tuesday.

A remorseful Kai Xu, 27, who already has been jailed for 19 months, told U.S. District Judge John Corbett O’Meara that he was grateful to border patrol agents “for stopping the darkness of my greed and ignorance," the Associated Press reports.

He claimed in a letter to the judge he got into the lucrative international turtle smuggling ring because he needed the money to pay the tuition for his final year of engineering school in Ontario, Canada.

Xu could have gone to prison for a decade. U.S. Attorney Sara Woodward said that although she believed Xu was genuinely remorseful, the smuggling operation was one of the largest authorities have seen in recent years.

The government estimated the value of the turtles intercepted at airports at more than $1 million, triggering the enhanced penalties.

Matthew Borgula, the turtle smuggler’s attorney, told the AP the 57-month sentence the judge settled on was “very severe,” and an appeal is planned.

Borgula said Xu wasn’t the “sophisticated international dealer” prosecutors made him out to be, and that a more savvy smuggler would have found a better way to conceal the turtles than to hide them in his pants.

That was “not a good way to get them across the border,” Borgula said.

Xu, who pleaded guilty to multiple counts of smuggling last December, had been under surveillance for some time when border patrol agents detained him after noticing “irregularly shaped bulges” in his pants, then discovered he had taped 51 turtles to his groin area and legs.

Buying turtles isn’t a crime in the United States, but shipping them overseas without a federal permit is. The turtles found taped to Xu’s body included Eastern box turtles, diamondback Terrapins, endangered spotted turtles and red-eared sliders, which are considered one of the world’s worst invasive species.

Authorities have said the incident at the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel was one of a string of bizarre smuggling attempts to feed the voracious appetite for the reptiles worldwide. Some are destined for the dinner table, but others are smuggled as pets. Turtles fetch a handsome price, especially in China and other Asian countries.

One of the turtles Xu tried to smuggle to China would have sold for about $800 on the black market, authorities have said.

Image credit: Endangered spotted turtle by Dave Pape via Wikimedia / Creative Commons