Mail inspectors in Torrance lead to turtle smuggler getting 2 1/2 years

A 54-year-old Hong Kong man was sentenced on Friday, March 14, in downtown Los Angeles to two years and six months behind bars after wildlife inspectors at a Torrance mail facility intercepted packages containing 40 protected eastern box turtles addressed to one of his purported aliases in China.

Sai Keung Tin pleaded guilty in December 2024 to four federal counts of exporting merchandise contrary to law, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Tin illegally aided in trying to send the turtles from the United States to China, according to an indictment. Wildlife inspectors intercepted four packages addressed to “Ji Yearlong,” a name believed to be one of Tin’s aliases, and shipped to Tin’s home in Hong Kong, court documents say.

Tin labeled the packages containing the turtles as containing almonds and chocolate cookies.

One turtle had died. The name listed as the sender on the packages was fake, federal prosecutors said.

The turtles were bound in socks to protect their shells and so they could not move and alert authorities, officials said.

The eastern box turtle is a subspecies of the common box turtle and is native to forests in the eastern United States with some isolated populations in the midwest.

An affidavit filed in the case said Tin was associated with Kang Juntao, 27, of Hangzhou City, China, a convicted felon and international turtle smuggler. Kang recruited turtle poachers and suppliers in the United States to ship turtles domestically to middlemen, who would then bundle the turtles into other packages and export them to Hong Kong.

Court papers say that from June 2017 to December 2018 Kang helped ship at least 1,500 turtles — with a market value exceeding $2.25 million — from the United States to Hong Kong. Kang pleaded guilty to a money-laundering charge after his extradition from Malaysia in 2019, and was sentenced to over three years in federal prison.