Buyers and seafood suppliers have long wondered how burglars can get away with selling stolen seafood – especially thousands of pounds of such stolen goods. Recent police documents detail how a massive heist of nearly USD 200,000 (EUR 184,000) worth of scallops was carried out, and successfully sold, in the United States.
The original theft of 8,350 pounds of U-10 scallops, which belonged to East Coast Seafood and Seatrade International in New Bedford, Massachusetts, allegedly occurred in December 2016 at Continental Cold Storage, also in New Bedford.
Antonio Vieira of Tiverton, Rhode Island, and Michael Caton, formerly a resident of Riverside, Rhode Island but currently residing in Applegate, California, were recently arrested and charged with larceny, forgery of a document and conspiracy, according to The Standard-Times.
Caton, a former logistics manager for Continental, quit after paying back a USD 2,500 (EUR 2,300) loan from the company, according to the police report. Continental fired Vieira, who worked with the company for around 20 years.
“Although this was an unfortunate incident for everyone involved, the freezer has assured Seatrade that they are implementing corrective actions they believe will make them a better vendor moving forward, strengthening an important link for the entire industry,” Bob Blais, CEO of East Coast Seafood and Seatrade International, told SeafoodSource.
Even though the burglary occurred in December 2016, police did not get a lead on the case until 1 March, 2017, when Carl Achorn, an employee at Ocean Fleets Fisheries, notified police that Vieira asked him if he knew of prospective buyers for around 8,000 pounds of scallops.
Vieira claimed the scallops "belonged to him and a boat owner, and that he has been holding them for him, and now has to give him the money owed,” The Standard-Times reported.
However, police determined the scallops belonged to Seatrade International.
Further complicating the investigation, New Bedford police and the Massachusetts Environmental Police investigated Maritime Terminal International Inc., the closest cold storage facility to Continental that could store a massive amount of scallops.
Maritime provided a transaction slip of 8,350 pounds of scallops under the account of Sea Born Products. A Maritime employee told a police detective that Vieira brought the scallops to the storage facility on 16 December, 2016, in a Continental shipping truck.
Four days later, Vieira asked for the scallops to be released. Sea Born Owner Jeffrey Lang told police that Achorn told him in December the scallops were for sale, but that they were not stolen. Lang thought the deal seemed “too good to be true" and passed on it, according to The Standard Times.
Next, Vieira made up the name of a phony business, “Scallop Connection,” in order to release the scallops from Lang's account, police reports said.
Achorn then reached out to many other potential buyers, including Erik Orman with Tempest Fisheries. Orman initially hesitated at a cash deal, but then agreed to the deal, according to the police report.
Orman paid USD 82,000 (EUR 75,454) for the scallops, and then delivered them to Northern Wind in New Bedford.
Neither Tempest nor Northern Wind knew the scallops were stolen, according to a police statement. New Bedford Police said they have not been able to find the missing scallops.
Northern Wind did not return a call from SeafoodSource for comment.
