Man With 50 Turtles Hidden Down His Pants Arrested

Apparently, turtle smuggling is a real issue in this country.

On Wednesday, border patrol agents arrested Kai Xu, an Ontario man, at the Detroit-Windsor border after authorities “noticed irregularly shaped bulges under his sweatpants on both legs,” The Detroit News reported. Xu was attempting to smuggle the turtles into Canada from the United States, presumably to either fly or mail them to China.

This wasn’t even Xu’s first attempt at turtle smuggling. Apparently, he and his partner, Lihua Lin of Toronto, had just been arrested earlier for allegedly attempting to smuggle 200 turtles in his luggage on a flight to Shanghai, China. These are just two incidents in a whole series of attempts by Xu to smuggle turtles to China, all of which have been foiled by federal agents.

There were several species found in Xu’s pants, many of them North American species, including Eastern box turtles and diamondback terrapins. There were also endangered spotted turtles, as well as red-eared sliders, which happen to be considered the world’s worst invasive species.

Some of the turtles could have fetched Xu up to $800 on the illegal pet trade. And some of the turtles were probably intended for the food market rather than the pet market. Either way, each of the 51 turtles found strapped to Xu’s legs and in his underwear would have been lucrative.

According to Ed Grace, deputy assistant director for law enforcement for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “Wildlife trafficking is a high-profit, low-risk crime. You can make as much money dealing in illegal wildlife species as you can dealing in arms and heroin and cocaine, but your chances of going to jail or being caught are less.”

And although credit can be given to Xu for persistence, apparently he doesn’t score much in the creativity department when it comes to turtle smuggling. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent Melissa Maraj told The Detroit News, “You see some extreme cases in which people try to smuggle things. Although this sounds really extreme, we see cases like this across the nation. People use a lot of ingenuity and creativity.”

For example, a passenger traveling to Beijing from the Guangzhou International Airport in China earlier this year tried to smuggle a turtle in a Kentucky Fried Chicken sandwich. He was stopped when an airport X-ray machine detected some “unusual protrusions” sticking out from the sandwich in the bag.

Despite the comedic factor of a man attempting to smuggle more than 50 turtles by stuffing them in his pants, turtle smuggling is a real crime, and Xu could face up to a decade of imprisonment for his attempt.

Lucky for him that snapping turtles aren’t in demand on the black market…

[Image via the CDC]