In Depth: Extradited Turtle Trader’s Case Reveals an Illegal Pet Business Worth Millions

With its body wrapped in a sock and its limbs tightly taped, the turtle with its head peeking out of the parcel was just one of more than 1,500 endangered turtles smuggled into Hong Kong from the U.S. over a year and a half. The creatures that survived the ordeal were destined to become designer pets on the Chinese mainland, worth thousands of dollars each to the criminals involved.