Canadian turtle smuggler receives 5 years in prison

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — A Canadian man who repeatedly entered Michigan to buy and ship thousands of turtles to his native China was sentenced to nearly five years in federal prison today for smuggling.

It was a tough punishment for Kai Xu, who has been locked up for 19 months since his arrest and had hoped to be released. The 27-year-old expressed remorse to a judge and thanked agents "for stopping the darkness of my greed and ignorance."

Ahead of the hearing, Xu wrote a letter to U.S. District Judge John Corbett O'Meara, saying he sold turtles partly to make money for college. He said he was a semester short of an engineering degree from the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario.

The government said Xu shipped turtles to China from Canada and the U.S., or hired people to fly to China with turtles in their luggage. In 2014, he was caught at the Ontario, Canada, border with 51 turtles taped to his legs.

It's not illegal to buy turtles from breeders in the U.S., but Xu's crime was shipping them overseas without a federal permit.