Woman charged, caught at border smuggling 947 plants
A woman has been sentenced to 100 hours community work and a year's supervision after she got busted at Auckland International Airport in 2019 trying to sneak in hundreds of cacti and succulents that were strapped to her body. Wendy Li pleaded guilty to charges stemming from two smuggling attempts, involving illegal plants and seeds from China, that she stood to make thousands of dollars from by selling them online. "The really concerning part to me is that this is akin to body-packing, which is something you would normally see with a drug smuggler," Ministry of Primary Industries director of compliance Gary Orr told Checkpoint.