A Hemet married couple was arrested on suspicion of smuggling of 911 sea turtle eggs across the U.S. border from Mexico.
Olga and Jose Jimenez each face up to a 50 year sentence in prison and a million dollars in fines if convicted of all charges. The pair is accused by The Justice Department of smuggling in the eggs from the endangered species last month. Via Press Enterprise:
The indictment alleges that on Nov. 23, Olga Jimenez, 52, took a bus from Nayarit, Mexico to Tijuana with a large cooler containing the eggs. Jose Jimenez, 64, drove from Hemet to the Mexican border and crossed into Mexico.
The indictment alleges that the couple moved the eggs from the cooler to two smaller coolers where they were concealed under ice, fish and shrimp and then loaded onto a pickup truck to be transported into the U.S.
Police arrested Jose Jimenez on December 7th in Hemet and Olga Jimenez was arrested in Arizona this past weekend.
The eggs were from two sea turtle species – Olive ridley and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles – both of which are listed on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. This makes it a violation in both the U.S. and Mexico to buy or sell any part of the sea turtles, including their eggs.
In parts of Asia, the turtle eggs are considered a delicacy and some believe that they have aphrodisiac effects, according to the Justice Department.
As The Press Enterprise notes, there really is not a whole lot of money in the smuggling of sea turtle eggs with the eggs going for between $3 and $5 per egg on the black market
As Lexie Beach, a spokeswoman for the Sea Turtle Conservancy, told the newspaper, “It’s not a lucrative business.”