{"id":304563,"date":"2026-07-24T09:45:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T09:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/304563\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T09:45:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T09:45:13","slug":"chinese-nationals-plead-guilty-to-illegally-shipping-turtles-from-us-to-hong-kong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/304563\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese nationals plead guilty to illegally shipping turtles from US to Hong Kong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two Chinese nationals pleaded guilty to allegedly shipping more than 500 turtles to <a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/news\/hong-kong?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Hong Kong<\/a> in violation of American wildlife law, the US Department of Justice said on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Kin Keung Ho pleaded guilty on Thursday while Lihua Owen Ma pleaded guilty to a similar charge on July 1. Both are residents of Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cDuring the plea hearing, the government proffered that Ho shipped approximately 99 packages containing 578 turtles,\u201d the agency said. \u201cHo falsely labelled the contents as containing crystals or stones.\u201d<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">According to court documents, Ho and Ma were charged separately with exporting several species of US native turtles, including eastern box turtles, western box turtles, three-toed box turtles, spotted turtles and diamondback terrapins.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The pair face up to five years in prison and a US$250,000 fine, or twice the economic gain. A sentencing date has not yet been set.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Lawyers representing Ho and Ma could not be reached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Chinese nationals pleaded guilty to allegedly shipping more than 500 turtles to Hong Kong in violation of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[115401,827,115400,115399,115395,115403,842,115394,115398,115393,115397,9,24,63,115396,115402,134,136,135,27986],"class_list":["post-304563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-amur-leopards","tag-china","tag-cites","tag-convention-on-international-trade-in-endangered-species-of-wild-fauna-and-flora","tag-diamondback-terrapins","tag-eastern-box-turtles","tag-hong-kong","tag-kin-keung-ho","tag-lacey-act","tag-lihua-owen-ma","tag-lumber-liquidators","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-siberian-tigers","tag-spotted-turtles","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-us-department-of-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}