Described as a modern-day pirate, Arnold Bengis is the face of fishery crime.
He has already served a five-year federal prison sentence for stealing massive amounts of rock lobster from South African waters and importing it to the United States. Now, a federal judge wants the former Long Island resident and two co-conspirators to fork over an additional $22.5 million in restitution to the South Africans on top of $7 million already collected in a separate criminal case.
The illegal fishing and fraud Bengis engaged in is part of a global black market valued by experts at up to $23 billion.
It’s exactly what the Obama administration targeted Sunday in announcing a new plan to stop seafood crime. The plan includes an ambitious system that aims to track every wild fish and crustacean from where it is caught to where it is shipped in the United States.
Before any seafood enters the U.S. market, officials said, it must contain information that federal, state and local officials currently do not ask for: its origin, who caught it, when and with what. That data can be taken by any federal, state and local authority at a port and submitted to a central database for tracking.
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8 comments:
But they can't track illegals.
Whats the joke? Are all the crabs and shrimp going to have little numbers on them. Obama has totally lost it.
That mofo is worried about seafood theft from Africa? Wtf?
Track every fish but cant back up email at IRS. Right.
Why not track every gram of heroin and coke?
Oh, because seafood is so addictive and kills.
I get it.
Sad but true. We'll know more about every fish on the planet than we do about OweBama's origin, schooling, etc.
But it should provide plenty of shovel ready jobs issuing Social Security numbers to each newly hatched fish!
exactly?? sounds to me like more bureaucracy and even going aboard Boats they decide to hassle... while the drug mules waltz across the southern border
Doesn't the federal gov't have bigger fish to fry? LOL
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