A Queens man and his five co-conspirators from Brooklyn were arrested by federal agents on Tuesday and charged with smuggling raw goose and duck intestines from China for sale to New York City restaurants and consumers.
Minghao Lin, 38, a U.S. Permanent Legal Resident who resides in College Point, is accused of transporting the illegal contraband for the group that brought multiple shipments from China, through Los Angeles to JFK Airport. All six were criminally charged on a complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court with importing and selling illegal merchandise from China.
The smugglers bypassed U.S. import laws between August 2022 and May 2023 and arranged for multiple shipments to JFK which were then transported to a warehouse in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, according to the complaint. The shipments of illegal products were falsely labeled. In one example, paperwork for an Aug. 19, 2022 shipping container that arrived in Long Beach, California from China falsely stated that the container held “1,966 cartons of pet grooming tools and pet nail clippers.” In another shipment, the illegal products were concealed under packaged dead rattlesnakes.
The co-defendants include Ming Huang Chen, 40, of Brooklyn, who ran the operation along with his domestic partner Runhua Hou, 32. Hangming Fang, 38, ran Chu Feng Food Wholesale where the contraband was stored before distribution to restaurants and consumers. Shanqing Ou, 38 and Hangting Lin, 32, where also charged in the scheme to buy, sell, conceal and facilitate the transportation of the illegal goods,
According to the complaint filed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General, in November 2022, a federal food safety investigator inspecting the walk-in freezer at the Sunset Park warehouse discovered 79 cartons containing 960 pounds of illegal duck intestines and 1,800 pounds of illegal goose intestines.
While the complaint does not say how much money was made by the co-conspirators in the enterprise, an inspection by a USDA Officer at Chu Feng Food Wholesale last June found nearly 6,496 pounds of illegal goose, duck, pork and beef merchandise stored in a garage with a street value estimated to be approximately $147,300.
The co-defendants were arraigned before U.S. Magistrate Judge Cheryl L. Pollak on Tuesday afternoon and released on bond. They each face up to five years imprisonment if convicted.
