Cracking of Laundered Fish Case Spawns Gift of Salmon for Needy

Investigators for the National Marine Fisheries Service have cracked the Case of the Laundered Salmon--and needy people in the Los Angeles area will be among the beneficiaries.

About 26,000 pounds of illegally imported salmon is being donated to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, the first third of which was picked up by the food center Friday from a frozen storage facility in Riverside.

“This is important because we seldom get protein foods,” said Charmeen Wing, the food bank’s development manager. “It really helps balance out the other items we receive.”

The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank’s share was part of 372,000 pounds of confiscated salmon that is being donated to the needy around the nation. The National Marine Fisheries Service chose Second Harvest of Chicago, a national nonprofit network of food banks, to coordinate the operation after the fish were inspected and declared fit for human consumption.

The contraband was forfeited to the government as a result of three U.S. District Court lawsuits filed by federal prosecutors in California and Washington state against Wescon Trading International, a San Bruno, Calif., fish-trading company.

The case broke in early 1987 when a Marine Fisheries investigator noticed shipments of incoming fish being “reboxed and labeled ‘Product of the U.S.A.,’ and reshipped to Japan,” said Robert Taylor, a Commerce Department attorney. False identification of the fish violated federal law.

Marine Fisheries investigators traced the salmon back to several countries, including Taiwan.

“Those salmon were very well traveled,” Taylor said.

The salmon were laundered--or involved in hidden transactions--because Taiwanese law prohibits the catching and export of salmon as part of an international agreement, and Japanese laws prohibit the import of salmon from Taiwan.

“Big bucks were involved,” Taylor said.

Marine Fisheries spokesman Jay Tebeau noted that the “street value” of a previously seized shipment of 595,000 pounds of laundered salmon was estimated at $796,000.

Distribution Centers

Officials of the Los Angeles food bank said they will pick up the rest of their salmon early next week and then begin distributing it to such agencies as the AIDS Project Los Angeles, Community Food Bank of West Covina, Santa Marta Center in Vernon, South Central Food Distributors and the Westside Food Bank in Santa Monica.

The salmon gift is also timely because donations from the Department of Agriculture surplus commodities program, such as cheese and powdered milk, are “being curtailed,” said Lora Blanchard, the food bank’s product donations manager. “We’re trying to step up our drive to increase donations from other sources.”