Woman sentenced after pleading guilty to smuggling endangered sea cucumbers, shark fins, sea horses

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A woman was sentenced to a month in federal prison for smuggling shark fins, sea horses and sea cucumbers into the United States.

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Xiao Pingping, 38, pleaded guilty to smuggling shark fins, sea horses, and sea cucumbers and attempted smuggling of American Ginseng on Dec. 11, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office Southern District of Florida. She was sentenced to one month in federal prison. Pingping was charged with a total of three counts.

In her plea deal, she reportedly admitted to investigators that on Jan. 14, 2022, she sent a package from Brazil to someone in Florida. She intentionally misidentified what was inside the box, WPTV reported. The DOJ said she wrote that the package had “fish belly” but really had 33 sea horses, 435 sea cucumbers and 16 shark finds. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (“USFWS”) requires that they be declared because they are wildlife.

She then traveled from Managua, Nicaragua, to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Nov. 19. Border agents reviewed her luggage and the X-ray scan showed some discrepancies, the news outlet reported. Border agents searched her luggage and found 11 sea cucumbers in the clothes and she did not declare them.

After the border agents found the sea cucumbers in her luggage, Pingping reportedly told them that she had “fish belly” but later admitted that it was sea cucumbers, WPTV reported.

Days later on Nov. 24, Pingping checked a cardboard box at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport heading to Managua, Nicaragua. Border agents checked her box and passed the box through the X-ray scan. She was stopped at the jet bridge when she was trying to enter the plane with a piece of carry-on luggage. She denied that there was anything to declare in her box. Border agents searched the checked box and her carry-on. They found nine bags and four boxes of American Ginseng in them, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida said.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) requires an export permit for protected plant species such as American Ginseng, according to WPTV.