The Cadillac of Crimes

New Jersey businessman Arnold Hansen-Sturm was sentenced to 18 months in prison Feb. 11, and fined $4,175 plus the costs of his imprisonment, for conspiring to buy and sell illicit caviar. His company, Hansen Caviar Co., was fined an additional $10,625.

Washington law limits the amount of caviar that may be taken from the state’s sturgeon, but Hansen Caviar bought an amount equalling the entire legal take (and worth about $2.5 million at retail) from unlicensed Washington fisherman Stephen Gale Darnell between 1985 and 1990. Last October Darnell confessed that the caviar had been taken illegally.

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Zilly rejected Hansen’s claim that he didn’t suspect the caviar might be illegal even though he paid Darnell in cash sent to a series of post office boxes. Hansen listed the Washington caviar on his books as imported in order to conceal the source, but much of it was actually sold as domestic. “What makes this unusual,” says National Marine Fisheries Service Special Agent Andy Cohen, “is that the usual scam is to pass off osetra (a cheaper grade of Russian caviar) as beluga, or sell domestic as imported. Illegal harvesting has been rare.”

The scheme was discovered when the manager of a motel in Vancouver, Wash., became suspicious of Darnell, who was renting by the month--paying cash and requesting no room service. To her surprise, she found he was processing caviar. Special Agent Cohen became involved because it’s a federal crime to traffic in fish taken in violation of state laws.

The Brown Decades

Guess who’s 100? Hershey Foods Corp., which reached the century mark last week. (Actually, though Milton S. Hershey started making chocolates in 1894, the first real Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar wasn’t introduced until 1900, and Chocolate Kisses are only 87 years old.) The company is offering a free anniversary recipe booklet containing 15 recipes. Send a business-size, self-addressed, stamped envelope to Hershey’s 100th Anniversary Recipes, 1500 Broadway, 25th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10036.

An American in Paris

Gregory Usher, the American-born director of the prestigious Ritz-Escoffier cooking school in Paris, died Friday in Paris as a result of complications due to AIDS. Usher, who was 43, had guided the school, considered one of the top three in France, since the late ‘80s. In 1989, the French government awarded him the Merite Agricole medal, honoring outstanding contributions to French gastronomy.