Eels can be real moneymakers.
A British seafood salesman received a two-year suspended sentence for smuggling $68 million of endangered live eels out of England to ship to Hong Kong.
Gilbert Khoo, 67, transported the rare glass eels, hidden underneath chilled fish, from 2015 to 2017 before he was nabbed at Heathrow Airport, the BBC reported.
Khoo had imported the eels from other European Union countries and kept them in a barn before shipping them, according to the British news outlet.
The judge in the case also ordered Khoo to perform 240 hours of community service.
The salesman, the judge said, had “a significant environmental impact upon the European glass eel,” which has a 30-year life cycle.
The eels could become extinct unless the threat against them is closely controlled, the court heard.