Three men were arrested in Brooklyn after allegedly stealing $1 million worth of frozen eel shipped from China, the New York Daily News reported.
Wei Da Li, 39, Sheauloon Yat, 51, and Fa Deng, 36, are charged with felony criminal possession of stolen property.
After a successful heist of 2,000 boxes of eels, the eels' actual owners, Mars Global Trading, reached out to police and began investigating what stores their product would show up in, the newspaper reported.
"We tried to see who's selling our roasted eel, roast barbecue eel," a company rep, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation, told the New York Daily News.
Mars Global Trading set up a sting with investigators to buy back 200 boxes of their own product, and authorities began tracking the alleged culprits to the location of the stolen goods.
Read the original story from the New York Daily News here.