Eating the Evidence

When you're a Hong Kong criminal needing to make a buck, and banks are difficult to rob, what do you do?

Steal more than 60 endangered Chinese three-striped box turtles. This isn't the first time the poor critters have been targeted; there's big money in the so-called gold-coin turtles, or at least there was: the going price of about HK$6,000 (US$769) on the black market is a huge drop from the 2001 rate.

Six men wearing masks stole the reptiles from a village house close to the border. A chief inspector for the police said:

It is possible the turtles were smuggled to the mainland for sale. They are said to have anti-cancer properties and people believe keeping gold-coin turtles can bring the owner good luck.

Chances are high that they'll end up as goopy black jelly rather than be kept as a lucky pet.

So which transgressors are worse: the bandits or the people eating the evidence?

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