A Border Storage Unit and USPS Boxes: How a $2.4M Smuggled-Pesticide Website Actually Moved Freight

A federal court in the Northern District of Texas sentenced Thao Duong and Lam Mai on Sept. 8 for running a website that sold Mexican veterinary drugs and pesticides smuggled into the United States without FDA approval or EPA registration. Duong received three months in prison, two years of supervised release, and forfeiture of more than $1.5 million; Mai received two years of probation. The Justice Department put the total value of smuggled merchandise moved between 2018 and 2022 at approximately $2.4 million.

What makes the case worth a freight publication's attention is the supply chain itself, which prosecutors laid out in detail. Duong began selling animal-health products online around 2011, primarily to buyers involved in rooster fighting, according to court filings. The business crossed into more serious territory by 2017, when it added two pesticides — Taktic and Bovitraz, both built around the active ingredient amitraz — to its catalog, and again in 2018 when Duong launched a dedicated e-commerce website as the primary sales channel. Neither product is registered with the EPA for sale or use in the U.S.; the agency has warned that amitraz-based compounds can pose risks to bees and to humans when handled improperly.

The physical movement followed a pattern familiar to anyone who works cross-border logistics: goods entered through the Calexico Port of Entry in Imperial County, California, were placed in storage units near the border, and were then shipped from California to Texas by co-conspirators using ordinary postal and commercial carriers. From Texas, Duong and Mai distributed the products nationwide the same way any e-commerce seller would — through the U.S. Postal Service and other parcel shippers, with Mai handling packaging and fulfillment. Alongside the pesticides, the operation sold Mexican-produced veterinary drugs including Cipio Vet, Baytril Max and Caterrol, none of which are FDA-approved, and Duong sold them without requiring the prescriptions a licensed veterinarian would demand.

"No one should profit from bringing illegal chemicals into the United States and poisoning American communities," said Jeffrey A. Hall, EPA assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance, in the Justice Department's announcement. Adam Gustafson, principal deputy assistant attorney general for the DOJ's Environment and Natural Resources Division, added that "the defendants in this case traded human safety and environmental health for illicit profit." The investigation drew on four federal agencies — EPA, FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations, Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service — a combination that reflects how thoroughly the case sat at the intersection of customs enforcement, consumer product safety and the parcel network.

What this means for forwarders and brokers

This is a small case in dollar terms next to a typical Section 301 tariff dispute, but the enforcement mechanics are exactly the ones customs brokers and last-mile carriers deal with on ordinary compliance questions.

The chokepoint was a land port, not a container terminal. Calexico is a passenger and commercial land border crossing, and this case is a reminder that CBP's cross-border enforcement priorities for unregistered pesticides and unapproved pharmaceuticals run through land ports and personal-vehicle or small-shipment channels just as much as through ocean and air cargo. Brokers filing entries for agricultural chemicals or animal-health products at land borders should expect the same FIFRA and FDA scrutiny that applies at any other port of entry.

Domestic parcel carriers are the visible seam. Once contraband cleared the border and reached a storage unit, its onward movement to Texas and then nationwide relied entirely on USPS and commercial parcel carriers — the same networks that move legitimate e-commerce volume. HSI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service's involvement here signals continuing federal interest in using parcel-level shipping data to trace unregistered chemical and pharmaceutical products back through the supply chain, which is relevant to any last-mile provider handling high volumes of small business shippers with limited vetting.

Unregistered veterinary drugs and pesticides are an active enforcement category. With EPA and FDA both naming enforcement of unregistered pesticides and unapproved animal drugs as priorities in this case, importers and brokers handling agricultural inputs, animal health products or informal cross-border trade in either category should treat registration and prescription documentation as points CBP and its partner agencies are actively checking, not paperwork formalities.