San Jose: Merchant gets jail sentence for importing infested fruit

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.

Prosecutors said Thanh Huynh had previously been warned by officials about the contraband produce, but that “she continued to advertise on social media and sell the fruit.”

The charges against the Huynhs were filed in May 2023 following an investigation by the district attorney’s office and the county division of agriculture, which was aided by the California Department of Food and Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Thanh Huynh earlier pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and was sentenced to community service, according to the district attorney’s office, which added that the case marked their first felony enforcement of the state Food and Agriculture Code involving illegally imported fruit.