SAN JOSE — A South Bay merchant has been sentenced to three months in jail for circumventing agricultural checks to smuggle fruit from Vietnam that carried a destructive fruit fly, authorities said.
Court records show that Hanh Hong Huynh, 43, was sentenced Tuesday following her conviction in May of conspiring with another person to illegally import and sell tropical fruit.
The fruit, which included langsat, was examined and found to be “heavily infested with the larvae of a destructive fruit fly endemic to Southeast Asia,” according a news release from the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.
Authorities alleged that in 2022, Huynh and a co-defendant, 38-year-old Thanh Tuyen Huynh, had the fruit shipped from Vietnam and had it labeled as dried fish, coffee or tea to bypass agricultural inspection.