QUEENS, NY — A smuggling pipeline from China funneled illegal duck and goose guts, blood and other banned foods into New York City, in part by concealing the goods under packages of rattlesnakes, prosecutors said.
Six city dwellers face federal illegal import charges in a scheme detailed in a 15-page criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday.
The charges cover four shipments of Chinese goods from LAX Airport to JFK Airport, one of which to Chu Feng Food Wholesale — a company run by a man charged in the case — included nearly 3 tons of illegal duck blood products, according to the complaint.
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A subsequent USDA seizure at Chu Food showed the scale of goods that flowed into JFK, the complaint states.
“In total, Chu Food’s garage contained approximately 6,496 pounds of illegal goose, duck, pork and beef merchandise, the current street value of which is estimated at approximately $147,300,” the complaint states.
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Meat from China, except catfish and processed poultry, is illegal to import into the U.S.
But the six people — Ming Huang Chen, Hangming Fang, Runhua Hou, Hangting Lin, Minghao Lin and Shanqing Ou — conspired to skirt the import law by smuggling illegal food to sell in New York City, including to restaurants, prosecutors said.
The foodstuffs were concealed a variety of ways, including by declaring on customs forms that a shipping container held “1,966 cartons of pet grooming tool pet nail clippers,” documents state.
“The container in fact held illegal poultry merchandise from China,” the complaint states.
A 2022 seizure of merchandise from two shipments showed some foods were hidden beneath packaged rattlesnakes, according to the complaint. Boxes were also marked in handwritten codes — for one shipment, “‘a’ meant snake meat, ‘b’ meant duck intestines, ‘c’ meant goose intestines, and ‘w’ meant goose intestines,” the documents state.
An inspector during that seizure found 79 cartons that contained roughly 1,800 pounds of illegal goose intestines and 960 pounds of illegal duck intestines, the complaint states.
The six people — all of which live in Brooklyn, except Minghao Lin, a Queens resident — were arraigned Tuesday, officials said.
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