A woman pleaded guilty on Friday to attempting to smuggle 29 Eastern box turtles, a protected species, that were individually wrapped in socks inside a duffle bag as she tried to paddle in an inflatable kayak across a lake from Vermont to Canada over the summer, officials said.
The woman, Wan Yee Ng, of Hong Kong, was arrested in June at a rental residence in Canaan, Vt., as she was about to enter into the kayak with the bag on Lake Wallace, according to a statement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont.
In August, she was charged with attempting to export merchandise contrary to law. Ms. Ng, who faces up to 10 years in prison, is scheduled to be sentenced in December.
A lawyer for Ms. Ng had no comment when reached on Sunday.
According to an affidavit filed with the criminal complaint, Ms. Ng, who was living in Canada, drew the attention of the U.S. Border Patrol at the Beecher Falls Station in Canaan after she repeatedly rented the same Vermont residence on Lake Wallace, which has shores in Canada and the United States and has been used in the past for smuggling.
On the morning of June 26, agents saw Ms. Ng carrying a duffle bag from the rented residence to the inflatable kayak near the water’s edge, prosecutors said.
At the time, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police notified U.S. border agents that two people, one of whom was believed to be Ms. Ng’s husband, had launched an inflatable watercraft on the Canadian side of the lake and started to paddle toward the United States, according to prosecutors.
Agents arrived at the rental residence in Vermont as Ms. Ng was preparing to depart and noticed through a partially opened zipper on the duffle bag “what appeared to be socks that were moving,” according to prosecutors.
A closer look revealed that the bag contained 29 turtles “that were individually wrapped in socks” to protect their shells and so they could not move, prosecutors said.
A U.S. Fish and Wildlife special agent identified the species as Eastern box turtles, a subspecies of the common box turtle that is native to forested regions of the eastern United States, with some isolated populations in the Midwest. On average, the turtles are about five to six inches long.
Eastern box turtles are known to be sold on the Chinese black market for more than $1,000 each, according to the affidavit.
“These animals are protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES),” prosecutors said, adding that the turtles, which can have yellow decorative markings on their shellssolare, “are especially prized in the domestic and foreign pet trade market, particularly in China and Hong Kong.”