A Canadian man who taped 51 snapping turtles to his legs and tried to cross the border has been sentenced to 57 months in a U.S. prison.
Kai Xu pleaded guilty to turtle smuggling after his arrest at the Ontario border in 2014.
The 27-year-old man, a former University of Waterloo student, said he was a semester short of an engineering degree.
Xu says he smuggled more than 1,000 turtles to pay for his tuition and ease the financial burden on his parents.
The U.S. government alleges he shipped those turtles to China.
It’s illegal to export wildlife from the U.S. without a permit.
Prosecutors in the U.S. said the shipments intercepted at airports were worth more than $1 million.
-- With files from The Associated Press
