Bao Zhang had little idea Wednesday night as he closed his San Francisco restaurant and headed home that Thursday would dawn in the most unpleasant of ways.
Because he had no idea that, for a year, wardens with the state Department of Fish and Game had watched as he allegedly bought poached abalone from North Coast divers and sold it to his customers at Bob's Sushi on Mason Street.
Thus Zhang had no inkling that, come 7 a.m. Thursday, wardens would break up that poaching ring, arresting him on poaching and felony conspiracy charges as four television cameras, three newspaper photographers and a handful of reporters — who did go to bed knowing about the bust — captured the moment.
State wardens on Thursday arrested 17 people and charged three more in what they described as the most extensive abalone and sturgeon poaching busts in California's history, snagging North Coast divers, Delta fishermen, and buyers and brokers in Alameda, Hayward, Sacramento and San Francisco.
Three Oakland police units were called to an arrest in Oakland after family members of the accused attempted to disrupt the arrest, a fish and game spokesman said.
The arrests capped three separate investigations that caught divers on video and had undercover officers selling to buyers and restaurant owners, including, at three separate times, to Zhang, 53.
The arrests netted some prolific poachers, according to the state:
Four abalone divers who, department investigators say, consistently and illegally harvested abalone from the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts and sold their haul to alleged distributors Jeff Chow, 35, of Alameda and Kalen Tanaka, 42, of Hayward.
Lance Robles, 43, of Fort Bragg arrested and convicted twice in the last decade on the same charges he found himself facing Thursday. Robles' brother, Leroy, 41 and also from Fort Bragg, allegedly sold to Zhang and was also arrested.
Marty Holloway, 44 of Beaver Marsh, Ore., arrested in April with Lance Robles after wardens caught the pair with 26 of the prized abalone. The daily limit — for personal use only — is three. When the local district attorney dropped the case, both went free. This time the state Attorney General's office will be prosecuting.
Two brothers, Oleg and Alexandr Krasnodemsky, 27, who allegedly ran a robust sturgeon roe distribution ring supplying buyers in Oakland and Sacramento and whose older brother, Nikolay Krasnodemsky, 35, was arrested last year on similar charges.
Eight anglers and buyers accused of participating in the sturgeon roe ring.
"Today we took a step toward knocking down the significant amount of poaching that continues to imperil sturgeon and abalone in California," said Nancy Foley, the agency's enforcement chief.
The department, she added, "has zero tolerance when it comes to the illegal commercialization of fish and wildlife."
Thursday's bust required 85 officers, a dozen support staff and help from federal, state and local law enforcement.
It focused on two increasingly imperiled species that continue to be hammered by poachers: red abalone, a mollusk whose only viable population in the world lives along California's North Coast; and sturgeon, prized for caviar but whose populations in the Sacramento San Joaquin River Delta are at a 50-year low and not expected to recover for a decade.
Both are in high demand.
Sturgeon roe, or eggs, can fetch up to $165 per pound on the black market and sell for $100 or more an ounce in restaurants, Foley said. Wild abalone go for $60 to $100 a pop on the black market, depending on size.
If convicted, those arrested face upwards of $5,000 in fines and two- to five-year probation sentences, said agency spokesman Steve Martarano. Poaching rarely results in prison time, he added, although those convicted are barred from obtaining sport fishing licenses, a crucial item many poachers use to elude wardens in the field.
And the agency is confident those arrested Thursday won't be wetting a line any time soon, Martarano said. "Our conviction rate is very, very high in these cases."
Contact Douglas Fischer at dfischer@angnewspapers.com.
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