Cops set the hook and caught a trio of slippery crooks in Brooklyn on Monday in a million-dollar frozen eel heist.
The men were nabbed with a truckful of boxes of the slippery delicacy nearly three months after the theft, authorities said.
The high-end barbecue-style eels were shipped from China to Maher Terminal in Elizabeth, N.J., on June 1, and that’s when the thieves struck, cops said.
They hired a truck driver as an unwitting accomplice, provided him with fake paperwork and had the eels picked up at the terminal, according to police said.
The driver headed to a spot in Borough Park, where the eels were loaded into another truck — and vanished. The caper scored 2,000 boxes of eels, valued at $1.04 million.
The eels’ actual owners, Mars Global Trading, contacted police, sparking a probe by the NYPD’s Criminal Enterprise Investigations unit.
The owners did their own legwork as well, finding their product popping up in restaurants and markets across the city and the state, police said.
“We tried to see who’s selling our roasted eel, roast barbecue eel,” said a company rep, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation.
Working with investigators, the eel owners set up a sting in which they would buy back 200 boxes of their own product Monday, outside a dim sum restaurant on Eighth Ave. and 66th St. in Dyker Heights, cops said.
The alleged thieves took the bait.
Authorities tracked the thieves from the warehouse where they were keeping the stolen eels, and one of Mars Global’s owners flagged down Officer Tony Yung of the 66th Precinct to move in for an arrest, police said.
Cops arrested three men, Wei Da Li, 39, of Queens, Sheauloon Yat, 51, of Brooklyn, and Fa Deng, 36, also of Brooklyn, charging them with felony criminal possession of stolen property.
In all, police recovered 200 boxes of eels from the men’s truck and another 745 from their warehouse, cops said.
“It’s a small company. This could kill the company,” said the Mars Global representative. “Unfortunately, we didn’t recover the whole thing. It’s a lot of money.”
With ANDY MAI
