A New York man pleaded guilty in a Brooklyn court for smuggling around 40,000 piranhas in to the U.S., Wednesday.
Joel Rakower confessed to illegally bringing the omnivorous wildlife fish to New York and falsely labeling it as common aquarium fish from 2011 to 2012, a statement by the U.S. Department of Justice read, reports CNN. He said his company bought piranhas from a tropical fish supplier in Hong Kong. According to the Associated Press, Rakower will pay $73,000 as fine.
It is illegal to either own or sell a Piranha, a voracious meat-eater, in New York and several other states in the country. The fish is considered territorial, aggressive and dangerous, reports the Examiner. These freshwater fish are mostly found in South American rivers.
Rakower smuggled the Piranhas worth $37,376. The prosecutors said he also sold the fishes to several retailers in various states. But only 850 of them could be recovered, the Justice Department said, according to Newsday.
The smuggling accused told the Hong Kong fish supplier to mislabel the piranhas as silver tetras, a common and unaggressive aquarium fish, reports CNN.
According to Barry Agulnick, Rakower's attorney, he had been in the wholesale tropical fish supply business for 30 years, and mislabeled the piranhas after New York City banned them in 2011, Newsday reports. "He made a minor error in judgment and he's paying for it," Agulnick said.
Richard Brown, Queens District Attorney, said that Rakower did not think about the health safety of the people by bringing the fish and was driven by greed.
Rakower's company will serve a two-year period of probation and he will be sentenced on April 24 in the Brooklyn federal court.
