Posted on 09/15/2016 5:26:34 AM PDT by w1n1
The following press release is courtesy of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife:
Two Southern California men have been convicted and fined for abalone poaching and other resource crimes, stemming from a September 2015 California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) enforcement case.
CDFW wildlife officers assigned to the patrol boat Thresherdiscovered the two men poaching abalone at Catalina Island. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office subsequently prosecuted both individuals.
Hee Won Chai, 75, of Los Angeles was charged with taking and possessing six pink abalone. Chai pleaded no contest to all six poaching counts. He was ordered by the court to pay $61,626 in fines and penalties, and $1,000 to the CDFW Preservation Fund. Additionally all of his SCUBA equipment was forfeited by the court and his fishing privileges permanently revoked.
Jin Chai Jeong, 58, of Garden Grove was charged with taking and possessing two pink abalone, three green abalone and four spiny lobsters out of season, as well as attempting to destroy evidence. Jeong pleaded no contest to all of the abalone and lobster charges. He was also ordered by the court to pay $61,626 in fines and penalties and $1,000 to the CDFW Preservation Fund, and his SCUBA gear was forfeited by the court and his fishing privileges permanently revoked.
“An extraordinary amount of time and effort is invested in helping the Southern California abalone populations rebound, including the sacrifice of honest abalone harvesters who cannot currently fish for abalone south of San Francisco,” said CDFW Law Enforcement Asst. Chief Mike Stefanak. Read the rest of the story here.
Game laws are racist
I know I feel safer now
Expensive fishing trip
It’s not a matter of safety, but rather non Western foreigners with no morality destroying our resources, and if allowed to continue, making those resources extinct.
Those people simply do not have a sense of right and wrong as we know it. They need to be policed, and in a perfect world, excreted from our country.
And guys like these have been killing otters, which feed on abalone.
Those guys could be fifth generation Americans. That’s really jumping to conclusions.
Poaching. No sympathy. As someone else writes: Very expensive fishing trip. Lucky boat wasn’t seized as well.
You put it in somewhat harsh terms, but I don’t disagree with the point about resources. The overfishing by Asian commercial fleets is a constant pressure, and there does not seem to be any ethos of sustainability.
Elderly man files bankruptcy and move into retirement community costing tax payers $150,000 per year as a result of stress from government harassment for picking up 6 fish!!!
They should have been illegal immigrants, they would have been given rewards instead of fines.
Dangerous —
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-most-dangerous-game-chasing-a-sea-snail-65897469/
I suspected that they were Asian.
US officials hook caviar poaching operation
By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles
18 May 2005
Immigrants from Russia and the Ukraine have imported a worrying criminal trend into California: the poaching of freshwater sturgeon for caviar.
Local officials, in their third such operation, smashed a caviar poaching ring responsible for stealing rare white sturgeon from local rivers and selling the roe for up to £140 a pound to immigrant communities where demand for the delicacy is high.
Nine men were arrested and six charged with conspiracy after state game wardens raided a Russian delicatessen in San Francisco and several Ukrainian workshops.
The alleged ringleader, Nikolay Krasnodemskiy, 34, is said to have poached the fish and prepared and packaged the caviar in two car body shops in an industrial suburb north of Sacramento.
A community of 75,000 to 100,000 recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union lives in the area.
Officials from the Department of Fish and Game tracked five shipments Krasnodemskiy made to San Francisco involving 120lb of Sacramento River Delta caviar valued at £8,700. It was sold out of homes and at a Russian delicatessen. The shop’s owner was arrested and charged.
Three other men were arrested, accused of approaching undercover game agents posing as fishermen and asking to buy the sturgeon they had caught.
Experts fear that the theft of Sacramento River sturgeon could threaten the species.
Not that I condone what these guys were doing, but I think the Founding Fathers would slap anyone who could write that sentence with a straight face.
ehh, baloney!
CC
Several years ago my niece was busted with what the game warden considered to be a wild steelhead with a "deformed" as opposed to a snipped fin. The fish was destroyed before the case went to trial and was never photographed. Even without any evidence other than the warden's testimony my niece was convicted, fined $1500 (not the maximum) plus forfeiture of her gear, plus of course $1000 to the fish and wildlife fund.
We don't fish or hunt in CA anymore.
If he is an immigrant, legal or not, send him home since he can no longer support himself. Else let his family or someone else sponsor him. Bottom line, he should not become a burden on US taxpayers due to his criminal behavior.
He was supporting himself... fishing!
Their behavior is cultural. If they are Americans their morals and values are from the old country.
They are not western values.
I saw this callous disregard over and over when I lived in California, among them.
The primary thing is not getting caught, not whether the behavior is right or wrong. It is a depature from our norms, and their presence devalues our society.
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